The Black Madonna (22 page)

Sylvia raised the corners of her mouth in a semi-smile and stood on the sidewalk looking up, her eyes shaded, trying to find number 196. She was slightly appalled, she told Harvey, on the way up the stairs, and when he mentioned their first apartment in the Bronx, Sylvia looked at him as though he had two heads. “What does the Bronx have to do with it? Why do you always have to drag up the past?”

“Stop it, please,” Judy said. She had sat without a word during the ride and the exchange with Dante but the stairs were a struggle for her and she just wanted to get this over with. She didn't really care about Jumbo's mother and had already decided that he could come here to visit her by himself and she wouldn't give a damn.

The stoop had been empty. Jumbo had purposely made it a Sunday so the women would be home from church, stirring their gravy, too busy to gather one above the other. But they were not too busy to hang out the windows, and when Dante had yelled up to tell Jumbo and Antoinette that the Bernfelds had arrived, they had all heard and they were leaning out now, elbows resting on the pillows that covered the window ledges so that they could sit comfortably and watch the street.

Sylvia found the steps tricky. They were steep and worn in the center. She struggled in her delicate high heels to make the five flights of stairs, holding on to the grimy banister, ignoring the occasional urchin who stood by an open door to watch the procession of the Jews from Long Island. They had been waiting, the women, to see what Jumbo had married because they had been convinced, as they were about Dante, that he never would marry, never leave his mother or the building on Spring Street where all his sisters lived with their husbands and children.

Jumbo was waiting on the landing to meet them. Judy rushed into his arms and he held her for an embarrassed moment, glad Antoinette was inside. He shook Harvey's and Sylvia's hands and led them into the apartment.

“Good trip in?” he said to Harvey and Sylvia. “Did you hit traffic?”

“No, not much,” Harvey said. “That was nice of your friend to save us a parking spot.”

“Yeah, well, Dante's always outside. It must be fifty years he hasn't left Spring Street.” Sylvia raised an eyebrow but was looking at the wallpaper pattern on the kitchen walls, big plaid patches in red and white with teapots and spoons and plates.

“Here they are,” Jumbo announced to the kitchen filled with Mangiacarnes. The five sisters descended. They kissed Judy and Sylvia and Harvey in a round robin. One would grab them and pass them on to the next sister, the next husband, the next child. Sylvia was dizzy, Judy was shy and grateful, Harvey was covered with lipstick, his hands filled with the flesh of arms and waists and occasionally boobs and behinds. By the time he had kissed and felt up all of Jumbo's sisters and embraced their husbands and children, he had tears in his eyes. He liked this, the smell of the gravy cooking on the stove, the heat of the bodies, the steam from the boiling macaroni pot. Sylvia was horrified. She gritted her teeth and closed her lips, terrified someone would slip a tongue between them. The touch of each sweaty hand made her cringe. The worst was when Jumbo smothered her in his arms and whispered “Mama” in her ear.

The sisters insisted they couldn't stay, they just couldn't. They were just too many. Sylvia was glad to see them file out. There certainly were too many of them, she thought, and they were all too big. They left through the narrow entranceway, patting and pinching as they went until there were just the five of them: Judy, Sylvia, Harvey, Jumbo, and Antoinette.

Antoinette wiped her hands on her front apron. “Come into the parlor,” she said. “Sit down. Have a drink.”

They moved the few steps into the living room, which was separated from the kitchen by a wall with a square cut into it and dressed with a curtain as though it were a window. The living room had two windows that faced the street. There was a couch, a coffee table, two chests of unmatched drawers, a television set, and a chair with a hassock. There was barely enough room to get around all the furniture, and Jumbo guided the Bernsteins to the couch, where they sat like three blind mice facing Jumbo in the chair with the hassock.

Sylvia looked around carefully, wondering where on earth they slept and how on earth the group that had just left had ever fit all together in these miserable rooms. She didn't know that Antoinette was very proud of these rooms, that they faced the front, that they were square, and that she actually had two bedrooms, one tucked off the living room, one off the kitchen, each with a cardboard closet and a window. Antoinette had nothing to be ashamed of. She did notice how skinny Sylvia was and she wondered if she might be sick. It looked like cancer to her but she knew enough not to ask. She offered the Bernsteins a highball, which Jumbo got up and mixed in the kitchen in a cocktail shaker that had instructions printed on the glass.

“Nice place you've got here,” Harvey said. “Reminds me of my mother's apartment in the Bronx.” He had to, Sylvia thought, refer to the Bronx. He just couldn't let it go, and when Harvey launched into a rhapsody about the old neighborhood, Sylvia pulled her dress down over her knees, plastered on a smile, and sipped her highball.

Antoinette got up and Harvey followed her into the kitchen. She took out a meatball from the pot and put it into a small dish for him to taste. Sylvia scolded from the parlor, but Harvey was gone. He asked to use the bathroom and Antoinette pointed to a door in the corner of the kitchen. Harvey opened the door and looked into a room the size of a closet with a toilet inside. He closed the door and turned back to Antoinette. “Excuse me,” he said. “There's no sink.”

“What do you want?” Antoinette said.

“I want to wash my hands.”

“Well, why didn't you say that? I thought you had to go. There,” and she pointed to the kitchen sink next to the stove and the big gooey bar of brown soap in the saucer on the drainboard.

Jumbo laughed from the living room. “That's funny, Harvey,” he said. “Did you think someone stole the sink? Get it, Ma?” Sylvia held out her glass for a refill. Antoinette raised an eyebrow. She didn't know Jews were drinkers. The Irish, yes, not the Jews. Antoinette liked the father. She had given him the dish towel to dry his hands and he was at the table, tearing off a piece of bread, mopping up the gravy from the meatball. She thought the girl was plain and she thought that was good but she wouldn't have minded beautiful grandchildren. She knew that good looks were more trouble than they were worth in a wife. Nicky had married that beautiful Gina Gandalfo with the long black hair and the big tits and had lost her just as fast, although Nicky was not Antoinette's idea of a man.

Antoinette looked Judy over carefully, especially her bulging stomach. She seemed quiet and definitely pregnant. Antoinette calculated: six Mangiacarne women to one of her. The mother didn't look like much competition. Sucking Judy into the family or, better yet, leaving her behind should not be a problem for the Mangiacarnes. Antoinette was thinking these thoughts, about to call the Bernsteins to the table, when a huge crate swung outside the living room windows.

“What's that?” Judy said, pointing. She went to the window and looked down; there was a piano movers' truck parked downstairs. “Look,” she said, “they're moving a piano.”

“It's not a piano,” Antoinette said, putting the bowl of macaroni on the table. “It's Lucy Petrazzini. She passed away last night.” Antoinette crossed herself.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” Judy said. “Was she ill?”

“She had everything. Diabetes, heart condition, psoriasis, asthma. She was four hundred pounds. Dr. Vincenza told her, ‘Lucy, you're digging your grave with your own fork.'” Antoinette shook her head. “She wouldn't listen.”

Sylvia estimated Antoinette to tip the scales at way over two hundred pounds herself. She shuddered to imagine Lucy. “That's a shame,” she said.

“Yeah, Nucciarone, he's our undertaker, the one the Naples people use, he came last night but he took one look and said there was no way he was getting her through the door, forget down the stairs.”

“That was smart,” Harvey said, “calling the piano movers.”

“Oh, he's smart. Did you ever meet a dumb undertaker? Now we're all thinking, what's he gonna bury her in? A piano box? Eh, we'll see tomorrow when they lay her out.”

Sylvia held out her plate for Antoinette to fill and pulled it back so quickly a meatball rolled onto the table. Jumbo speared it and ate it off his fork. Harvey sat, his shirt covered with a huge cloth napkin that Antoinette had tucked into his collar after she made him take off his jacket, which she hung on the back of the bedroom door off the kitchen where Jumbo slept.

“You're not eating, Sylvia,” Antoinette said. “Something wrong?”

“Mother has a delicate stomach,” Judy said.

“I knew it was something but I didn't want to ask,” Antoinette said. “That's why you look so sick, huh? So skinny. Poor thing. You want me to make you pastina? That's easy to digest.”

“No, no,” Sylvia said. “Please, I'm fine. This is delicious.”

“Well,” Antoinette said, “Harvey here made up for you. You want to take some home? Jumbo can bring me the bowl next time he comes.”

“I'd love some to take home,” Harvey said. And Antoinette shuffled macaroni and meatballs into a green Pyrex bowl, telling Jumbo just to make sure she got the bowl back because it was part of a set.

Sylvia stood up as soon as she could, edging toward the door, hoping to avoid the physical contact she'd endured when she arrived. “Traffic is terrible on a Sunday night,” she said. “We should be going.” Harvey stood up with her and then Judy, who got up and stood behind Jumbo. She ran her hand along his neck and up under his hair. Antoinette noticed.

“Where you going?” Antoinette said. “There's more food. I got roast chicken, potatoes, salad, coffee, cake. Where you going so soon? The kitchen was hot and she wiped her face with the dish towel.

“We'll come another time,” Sylvia said. “This was wonderful. Thank you. We loved it. But you know, Judy gets tired. You remember.”

“Let's go, sweetheart,” Judy said to Jumbo. She bent down and kissed his ear.

“Where's he going?” Antoinette asked.

Judy looked at her mother, at her father. “Home,” she said to Antoinette.

“Home?” Antoinette looked at Jumbo. “What's this? This isn't home?” She took in a breath. “Whatta you doing?” she said to Jumbo. “I just meet this girl and now you're going home with her?” Antoinette turned to Sylvia. “I don't know about you, Sylvia, but I don't think they should rush things.”

Judy bit her lip until there was blood. “We're married,” she said, “and we're living with my parents until after the baby comes. Jumbo must have told you.”

Antoinette ignored her and spoke to Jumbo. “After the baby comes, sure. You get your own place. But now? Believe me, it's not healthy to live with parents. I know. Didn't I do it for six years? Wait,
caro.
Stay here until you get set. Let her go with her parents. It's better for now.”

Judy dug her fingers into the flesh of Jumbo's shoulders. “You choose,” she said. “Me or her.”

Jumbo stood up. “I gotta go, Ma,” he said, and followed the Bernsteins out the door.

A
ntoinette put on black. She had lost her son, the only one she had ever had. She sat in the kitchen for three days after meeting the Bernsteins with her arms folded in front of her on the kitchen table and her head buried. The girls came one by one and all together. They shook her forearms, the size of hams, and they talked to her head since her face was hidden.

“So, Mama,” Rosina said. “It had to happen sometime. She's a nice girl. They're gonna have a baby. You should be happy.”

“I'm not happy, Rosina. I want to kill myself,” Antoinette said, her voice muffled by her arms. “I want to die. You tell me, how's she gonna take care of him? How's she gonna feed him? How could she do this to me? I'm a widow. She took him away from me to God knows where . . .”

“Ma, Long Island is not God knows where. You can get there by train. And he's still working across the street in Benvenuto's.”

“A daughter's a daughter till the end of your life. A son's a son till he finds a wife,” Albina said. She had four daughters. She thought she had all the luck.

That made Antoinette raise her head. “Leave me alone, all of you. If I'm not here in the morning, call Nucciarone. Lay me out in the blue dress. It's in the back of the closet in Jumbo's room.” And she put her head back down and sobbed.

Raffaella made her coffee and patted her her. “Drink something, Mama. It will work out.”

“Call your brother. Tell him what's happening. Tell him I'm dying.”

J
umbo came. Luca Benvenuto let him leave the bar. His mother was calling, after all, and Fat Eddie Fingers was in Miami. Jumbo came into the kitchen with apple crumb cake. He got a dish and put the cake in the middle of the table. He called for his mother but she didn't answer. He called again and then sat down and cut into the cake with a knife. He heard moaning from his old bedroom, the one off the kitchen. He could see her lying on the bed from where he sat. “Get up, Ma. You wanted to see me, I'm here. I got crumb cake.”

Antoinette came out of the bedroom. She pulled his hair, then kissed his head. “You're gonna kill me, Jumbo. How much can I take?”

“C'mon, Ma, Judy's a nice girl. I'm married to her, for chrissakes.”

“Can she cook? Is she gonna let you see your mother? Take care of your sisters? Will she spend all your money?”

“Ma, whatta you want from me?”

“I want you to swear this baby's gonna be ours. You're gonna baptize it. We're gonna have a big party. You cheated me out of a wedding. You're my only son. You disgraced me. You gotta make it up.”

“Christ, Ma. Didn't I promise you the drawer?”

Antoinette folded her arms across her chest. “That's separate. I'm talking about the baby. The name, if it's a boy, Salvatore, after your dead father.” She crossed herself and kissed her fingers. “He should be a saint in heaven by now the way I pray. If it's a girl, you know what to do.”

Jumbo could feel the sweat under his arms, down his spine. “Ma. I told you yes already. I promised.”

“Promise again. I want to hear it!”

“Ma, what is this? Calabria?”

“Swear to me!”

Jumbo could feel the crumb cake dry in his throat, caught, like a dead fish. Antoinette unwound her arms. She poked the back of Jumbo's head. “You swear and you promise. Now!”

“I swear. I promise.”

“What? Tell me what you swear and you promise.”

He went through the litany for her. When he finished, she took his head in both her hands and kissed his cheeks and his mouth. He was soaking wet, as though he had been caught in a summer storm, as though the heavens had opened up and tried to drown him. After Antoinette, Fat Eddie Fingers was the least of his worries.

Jumbo's knees buckled on the way out. He held on to the banister to get down the five flights of stairs and when he got out in the street he asked Dante if he could sit in his chair just for a minute while he caught his breath. Dante went and got him a Coke from inside Benvenuto's. Luca made him pay for it.

J
umbo shifted between his mother's house and the house on Long Island where Judy, huge with the baby, sat by the pool in maternity shorts and a white cotton pleated smock. Sylvia said she should stay at home, it was summer and her ankles were swollen, but the truth was Sylvia had always been embarrassed by Judy's figure or lack of it, and she didn't want her waddling around the country club with the varicose veins that were starting to climb up her legs like grapevines. Harvey stayed by Judy's side, doting, carrying trays of fresh-squeezed lemonade in colored glasses and rubbing her ankles. “Her husband should be doing that,” Sylvia said, pouting, but Harvey ignored her.

“He's working, Sylvia,” he told her and he was happy Jumbo was working and away from there. He liked taking care of Judy. Jumbo was working every night, and on the weekends when he did double shifts he stayed on Spring Street with his mother.

Antoinette was happy to have Jumbo back, even if it was just for weekends. It was the least he could do. She had wanted him to marry, she told her daughters, but not like this. She had wanted to dance at his wedding to “Son of Mine.” She had wanted a dress with beads and a matching hat and shoes, an orchid on her shoulder. She had wanted to be the mother of the groom and walk down the aisle of St. Anthony's on the arms of her sons-in-law and have everyone admire her dress and matching hat and shoes. Jumbo had cheated her.

So every Friday night he pulled up to Spring Street in Harvey's Cadillac and got dressed up his mother's house and went to work across the street in Benvenuto's. He called Nicky to tell him what was going on and Nicky gave him the news that their mothers had seemed to bury the hatchet, but he didn't tell Jumbo that Antoinette had asked Teresa if maybe Nicky could do something, like arrest Judy Bernstein, give her parking tickets, anything to maybe make her go away, to open Jumbo's eyes. And Nicky didn't tell Jumbo that they had gone together to Magdalena looking for magic spells to get rid of Judy.

“So now you're friends?” Nicky had said to his mother. “After all these years, the two of you are looking out for each other?”

Teresa had ignored this. “So what can you do, Mr. Big-Shot? Can you help?”

“I'm a homicide detective, Ma, not a traffic cop. If Jumbo's wife commits murder somewhere between here and Canal Street, I could arrest her for murder.” Teresa sat down and put her head in her hands, her fingers splayed across her temples. “If she committed murder . . . maybe if Magdalena asked her Madonna. If only people would help each other, life on this earth would be easier.”

“You tell your friend Antoinette she's gonna love this girl if she gives her half a chance.”

Teresa puffed her cheeks and blew the air out of her mouth in disgust. “These girls today don't have no respect,” she said. “Look at you, with that Gina. If I had known . . .”

“Weren't we talking about Jumbo?”

“So now I gotta tell Antoinette. I gotta tell her there's nothing you can do and she's gotta live with it.”

“Right, Ma. She's gotta live with it.”

“Her only son. I know how she feels. Even if he is a
mortodevame,
he's her son.” She softened. “Like you're my son.” She raised her hands to hold his head. “Ah, Nicky, I worry about you all alone.”

“I got you, Ma. You're all I need.”

“This year I'll do Our Lady of Mount Caramel for you to find a girl to take care of you when I'm gone.”

“Where you going?”

“Ah, Nicola, nobody lives forever . . . not even your mother.”

W
hen Judy Bernstein had the baby, Jumbo was uptown at Jilly's with Nicky and Salvatore. They had picked him up after work and gone to have a few drinks. Judy had been frantic trying to call his mother's but Antoinette kept hanging up the phone when she heard Judy's voice. Finally Sylvia tried and then Harvey but by then Antoinette wasn't picking up the phone at all and Harvey said they might just as well go to the hospital without him. He'd find out sooner or later.

Jumbo had a big fight with Antoinette when he found out but she denied everything. The phone never rang, Antoinette told him, except for some crank calls. But when Jumbo told her about the baby, a boy, Antoinette's face changed just a little. She hid the expression that slipped across her eyes and mouth when she heard the word
boy.

“A boy,” she whispered, and clasped her hands together and eyed heaven.
Grazie, Madonna,
she mouthed, and turned to face her son. “Salvatore, remember? You promised, you swore. Salvatore.” And she cried big fat tears that rolled down her face. Jumbo put his arms around her and they sat together on the couch. “Salvatore, after your father, like he was named after his father, Salvatore.” She kissed Jumbo on both cheeks. “You'll bring him here. So I can see him, right away, and you don't wait too long to baptize him. Right away. You never know.”

A
nd after Jumbo left Spring Street and went to Long Island Jewish Hospital and kissed his wife and faced the puss of his mother-in-law and the scowl of his father-in-law, he held his baby in his arms and was as proud as if he had done this all on his own.

Harvey put his finger to his lips. “Judy's happy, Sylvia. We have a grandson here with us. What could be better?”

Sylvia thought a nice Jewish doctor would be better. She was sure the one who had come in to see Judy after the delivery had noticed Judy's big brown eyes and sweet nature. If only she had met him before.

I
don't know what I'm gonna do now,” Jumbo told Nicky the next night. They were sitting in Benvenuto's. Jumbo had locked the door and was closing out the register. He had also broken out a bottle of twenty-five-year-old scotch to celebrate.

“What now?” Nicky said.

“I promised my mother I'd baptize the baby. I promised her I'd name him Salvatore. I promised Judy's parents I'd raise the kid Jewish. I promised to name him Sol after some dead guy. The Jews name after the dead, did you know that? What kind of custom is that? How you gonna get money from a dead guy?”

They hatched the plan the next night, the three of them, and even Salvatore had to admit it was a good one. Of all of them, he was uneasy, because Magdalena had always made him know there was a greater power, an omnipotent one, and though he moved out in the world in custom pin-striped suits and slept with a golden blond woman who could ride a horse with an English saddle, he knew there were lines you didn't cross, so when Nicky came up with the idea of the bogus priest he had arrested at the San Gennaro feast on Mulberry Street, Salvatore wanted to tell them to leave him out of it. But magic was for women and Salvatore was a man, so he listened while Nicky and Jumbo schemed and when the part about the priest came up he excused himself and went outside into the street to check on his car.

S
o we get Father Jerome to baptize the kid,” Nicky said.

“But where?” Jumbo said, pouring himself a shot of scotch. “Antoinette's not gonna buy a ceremony in her living room I don't care what kind of collar this guy is wearing.”

“Will you relax?” Nicky looked over his shoulder. “Where's Sally? He was just here.”

“He wanted to check the car or something. Keep talking. He don't have to hear this. We can tell him later.”

“Father Jerome's a professional. You know how many years it took to nab him? He's retired now but he's still got the collar. I think he works a door-to-door scam in Florida in the winter.”

“Nicky, I don't need a history. I need a baptism.”

“Okay, so we get Father Jerome and we do it in St. Pat's on Mulberry Street. Tell your mother this priest did you a favor. It's sentimental. You want him to baptize the kid. She'll like that you got a priest for a personal friend.”

“I know a priest I never mentioned before?”

“Jumbo, you tell your mother everything?”

“Okay, forget it. How do we get into the church?”

“My ex-wife's Aunt Geraldine takes care of the altar cloths down there. I still stake her at Christmas. I'll get the keys. If there's any surprises, well, I'm a cop, no? We'll play it by ear. It's quiet there Sunday night. Tell your mother it's a private baptism. Make it something special, just the principals.”

“What principals?”

“For chrissakes, Jumbo, the main parties: you, your mother, the godparents, and the baby . . . the principals.”

“Good. Then what?” Jumbo looked around. “Where the hell is Salvatore?” The light from outside cut the darkness of the bar for a second as Salvatore came up alongside them and sat down.

“The car's okay?” Nicky asked him.

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I didn't get a ticket.”

“Christ, Sally. It's the neighborhood. You're parked outside Fat Eddie's and Nicky's a cop. You been in Connecticut too long. Lemme feel your head.”