The Wine of Youth (10 page)

Hugo went reluctantly, looking over his shoulder a couple of times. Then from behind us we felt it, each of us at the same time, and before we turned and looked at her we knew that agony coming from behind us, flowing into us, and we all turned at once, and she stood there looking at us, and she seemed a million years old, Mamma, our mother, and we her children had felt her broken heart, she there in the kitchen door, an apron hiding the tumbled misery of her churning hands, little rivers of vanished beauty wandering vainly down the wasteland of her cheeks.

Once I too was like Coletta, said the speechless lips, but all that I ever was has gone into the four of you, and into him, and
there you stand, my burden and my reward. We felt her message, but we could not understand it, for it confused and terrified us; and rather than suffer with her we fled past her and through the back door, while tears tumbled down her cheeks as Papa's laughter rattled through the house. But Clara stood there holding Mamma's hand.

We tiptoed around the house, through the strawberry and mint beds, until we were at the front-room window. I was tall enough and so were Mike and Hugo, but even when he was on tiptoe Tony's eyes didn't reach the top of the sill. We shushed him to be quiet, but he gasped and clawed to lemme see, lemme see, tearing at our shirts and raging with tears, and then he began to kick us, and he knocked Hugo down, bawling hysterically, screaming for us to get him a box to stand on, or else he'd spoil everything. It scared me: he pulled his hair and bit his fingers like a boy gone insane. I ran to the coal shed and hurried back with a box. He climbed up on it, and immediately he was quiet as he gazed and gazed at the beauty of Coletta Drigo, the last of his sobs trailing off into a kind of crooning contentment.

I shuddered at what I saw. Coletta was still seated between Papa and Dino, with her knees crossed, and I could see even more of the knees from the window. A paroxysm of sensual shocks staggered me as I devoured their roundness incased in golden silk. It was murkily sinful, and I wanted to enjoy it in secret; the presence of Mike and Tony and Hugo irritated me. It made me angry that perhaps Mike too was enjoying the same sensations, and maybe Tony too, but he was so little. All at once I wanted to punch Mike in the nose, the evil-minded little fool.

“Why don't you beat it?” I said.

“So you can have the whole window to yourself? Nothing doing! We're staying—aren't we, Tony? Aren't we, Hugo?”

Hugo barked, and Tony warned: “I'll cry again.”

“Okay,” I said, pinching his arm viciously and butting Hugo out of the way. “Stay, and see if I care.” Hugo got hold of my pants leg and started tugging, growling and shaking his head. I patted him and he quieted.

Papa was talking. Not only that, but Papa had his hand on Coletta's knee now, patting it and roaring with laughter. “So the
minute Pat got under the bed, Mike came in.” He laughed some more, bending over and letting it sputter out of him, patting and squeezing her knee. It was contagious laughter. Coletta laughed with him, and so did Dino, and then the three of us at the window were laughing and laughing, Hugo barking and barking, and none of us knew why. On and on we laughed, until Tony fell off the box and rolled on the grass, his arms squeezing his waist, Hugo straddling him and growling happily, and Mike and I watched him, and still more laughter came from the room, wild brutal laughter, impossible to understand.

It ended as quickly as it began, and I thought Mamma and Clara had come into the room, but they hadn't. Once more Tony climbed up on the box. Now there seemed no more laughter in the world, and a grimness set the faces of Papa and Coletta, who polished her nails against her thigh and pretended to be very busy with this task. Papa had removed his hand from her knee. He sat like Dino, his arms crossed stoically, rolling the cigar between his teeth, and Dino's face was as smiling as ever, showing simple gratitude for being one of them.

Silence held the room. Dino looked toward the kitchen. “But what of Maria?” he asked. “Ah—we should have helped her.”

They listened until there was the sound of pans rattling in water. Dino got up and bowed.

“If you will excuse me, please.”

They watched him walk out of the room. A moment later we could hear him in the kitchen talking to Mamma and Clara, and we knew he was helping them with the dishes. Papa and Coletta were alone now. Papa winked at Coletta through the smoke of his cigar. He bent close and spoke softly. We couldn't hear it from the window. His left eye squinted as he talked, and it was evident he was talking about Dino. Papa had a certain way of squinting his eyes for every subject he talked about. We could look at his face and know unmistakably if he was talking about politics. Or about war. Or women. Or money. Now we knew Papa was talking about money. Not his money—we knew he didn't have any—but Dino's money. He kept nodding his head and his squint sharpened. Coletta played with the bracelets on her wrists and smiled wistfully. We looked at one another, our way of
disapproving what was being plotted in that room, even though we couldn't hear a word of it.

As soon as he heard footsteps, Papa got to his feet. In a loud voice that was almost a yell he said: “And so I said to him, I said, ‘George, what this town needs is an honest mayor, because if we don't have honesty at the top you can't expect it at the bottom.'”

Coming into the room, Mamma shook back her hair and smoothed it with reddish hands. Her cold eyes were for Coletta and Papa, telling them she had nothing to say to either of them. Coletta arose.

“I must go now,” she said. “It was a wonderful dinner, Mrs. Toscana. I enjoyed it so much.”

Papa grinned. You could see he felt highly complimented. He put his arm around Mamma's waist and patted her seat. “You ain't tasted nothing yet, Coletta. This old girl can really cook.” Then he laughed. “What do you think I married her for? Maybe she don't look like you, but, oh, boy, how she can cook!” Mamma backed away, her face white and tight. Dino took both Mamma's hands in his and opened the palms. He bent and kissed each of them lightly, in the middle.

“Thank you, my Maria,” he said in his usual Italian. “These weary little hands are much too patient with all of us.” The sharpness left Mamma's face, and for the first time she smiled. “Thank you, Dino,” she said.

Papa left the room and returned with Coletta's fur. Hugo growled and we shut him up. Papa's eyes were bright as he held the fur, and you could see his fingers were startled by the rich softness. He was awed as he held it out to Coletta, holding it out in his two hands as though it were an animal that mystified him. Like a black leopard she walked across the room to the edge of the divan, where she had left her handkerchief. All of us, those in the house and we at the window, stared in amazement and marveled at the miracle of her wonderful movements.

Then Papa spoke. “As long as you're going toward town, Coletta, why don't you give Dino a lift?”

“Of course!” she said.

Dino protested: it was too much trouble, he felt like walking,
he loved the night air, he needed exercise, his rooms were only a few blocks away. We turned from the window to look at the car, which stood directly in front of our house, the sleek lines melting into the night. It seemed as it should be, that car. Coletta belonged in no other car but that one; it was as much a part of her as the dark hair, the black fur, the leopard-like movements.

Dino's protests got him nothing. Both Coletta and Papa pooh-poohed his desire for exercise, and when Papa handed him his hat Dino shrugged in defeat.

“Go on, you two,” Papa said. “Hop out there.”

He took Dino's left hand and slipped it under Coletta's right arm. Dino looked at Mamma for help, and Mamma understood, but she couldn't do anything. Coletta dropped her eyes shyly, looking down at Dino, because she was taller and in every way larger than he.

She said: “There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it, does there, Dino?” And Dino smiled to hide his embarrassment. Papa got behind them, put his arms around both of them, and almost knocked them down when he crushed them together and shoved them toward the door.

“Go on, you two!” he said. “Get out there under the moon and under them there stars and really get to know one another!”

Tony looked at the sky.

“What's he talking about? There ain't any stars.”

“No moon, neither,” Mike said.

“Shut up,” I said.

We heard them on the front porch. We ran around the side of the house and threw ourselves on our bellies in the strawberry patch. Coletta and Dino stepped off the porch, their arms locked, and walked up the path toward the car. Gently Dino tried to remove his hand. It brought a yell from Papa on the porch.

“No you don't, Dino! What's the matter? Can't you act like a gentleman for five minutes?” and Papa laughed.

We were so disgusted with Papa that we buried our faces in the strawberry patch, and I was so disgusted I tore out grass with my teeth. When they reached the street Dino did take his hand from her arm as he stepped toward the big car and briskly opened the door. But Coletta scarcely saw him as she walked past the
shiny monster and stopped before a tattered jalopy parked behind it. The wreck was an old Ford, top gutted, fenders smashed, paint peeling. It was such a wreck that we hadn't even noticed it.

“No, Dino,” Coletta said. “Poor little me.
This
is my car.”

Shocked, disillusioned, incredulous, the three of us sat up. We didn't care if we were seen or not. Coletta got behind the wheel and Dino got in beside her. The engine started with a series of plups and flups and the choke rod squealed hideously as Coletta pumped it. The car rattled down the street, Hugo chasing it and barking bitterly while we stood sneering at the wake of dirty exhaust smoke almost concealing an Illinois license plate.

“Pah,” Mike said. “She's a phony.”

“I hate her,” Tony said.

“A frill,” I said.

Hugo came back to where the car had been parked. Very busily he smelled around here and there and, when he looked up the street where they had gone, his hair stood up on his neck and he growled menacingly.

 

For a week after Coletta's visit our house was a pretty hard place to live in. Mamma got careless with her hair, and she stopped using face powder, and she kept wearing the same blue gingham dress with the white dots. That was the way with things at our house. Mamma and Papa would have a quarrel, and Mamma would let herself crumble and waste away.

It was just the opposite with Papa. Oh, he got spruced up more than ever. He took to shining his shoes and whistling all the time, as though something exciting were going to happen that night, like a dance or a banquet at the Little Italy Club.

While Mamma cooked dinner he would be very gentle with us, giving Clara a nickel for brushing his suit or going after ten-cent cigars, because at those times of strife with Mamma, Papa always smoked Chancellors, perfuming the house with their rich Papa-like smell. Then we would have dinner, Papa all frisked up in a white shirt without a tie, and he would laugh and talk to us, wonderfully heroic with tales of what he did years ago, when men were men and bricklayers were really artists, when he had built a whole church with his own hands.

We worshipped him then: he was exciting, and he answered all our questions with rich stories that ended in ways undreamed of. We sometimes got mad at Mamma, because she would push back her chair and leave the table in the middle of one of his stories. A shadow would cross his face as he watched her go, and we would plead loudly with him to tell us some more, and he would shake himself as if it were all a dream, saying: “Oh, yes, where was I?” We would tell him and he would sigh and finish the story.

But his stories were always better if Mamma listened. We couldn't understand why Mamma stayed mad at him; we sometimes blamed Mamma, yet in a way we were glad they were quarreling, because Papa never told those wild tales of his past unless he and Mamma were not on speaking terms. I used to think about it a great deal in those days, and I used to say how foolish Mamma was, and I used to think if I were she I could never be mad at a man as exciting as Papa.

Four nights after Coletta's visit, Papa came home drunk. It must have been about five in the morning, because when we woke up it was almost daylight through the bedroom window. We heard him stumbling around in the living room, singing “
La Donna è mobile
.” All at once there was a crash of furniture, and then quiet. The lights flashed on, we jumped out of bed, and Mamma and all of us hurried to the living room to find Papa sprawled on the carpet, lying on his back with a pleasant smile on his face. Hugo walked up and licked Papa's nose, and Papa said woo-woo-woo and tried to kiss Hugo. In the corner, still rocking back and forth, was Mike's football, swished there after Papa had stepped upon it. We knew he wasn't hurt or he wouldn't be smiling so happily. Hugo had smelled Papa's breath and sauntered away in disgust.

“Papa's drunk,” Tony said, and we looked at one another and smiled. Old Papa, just plastered to the gills and very happy, and we grinned knowingly, feeling sophisticated and mature. Papa often got drunk. He was so generous when he got drunk. We liked him very much when he got drunk. But Mamma felt different. She detested him like that. She looked down at him, her teeth clenched.

“Look at him,” she said. “Just look at that shameless man, father of four innocent children!”

We didn't like to be called innocent, so we defended Papa, and Mike surprised Mamma when he said: “A man's got a right to get drunk once in a while.”

“Let's wake him up,” Tony said. “Maybe he'll give us some money.”

“Look!” Clara pointed. “Blood! There's blood all over his shirt.”

We fell on our knees around him. Tony and Mike began to cry, and that started Hugo whimpering. “Papa's hurt,” Mike said. “Our papa's injured. He's dead, he's dead.” I told them to shut up, and while Mamma unbuttoned Papa's coat they became so interested they stopped crying.