Unto the Sons (86 page)

If there was anything that had surprised him about these Americans who were so much older than he, it was probably that a majority of married couples who patronized his shop had retained much open affection for one another, revealing traces of romance he had never observed among late-middle-aged couples in Maida. For example, he often saw the Americans holding hands as they entered his shop (he had never seen the same along the streets of Maida or even Naples); and while he was kneeling or standing at the side of a woman with his tape measure and notebook, conducting a fitting as she posed rigidly on the pedestal, he would
often catch a glimpse, in the three-sectioned mirror, of her husband watching proudly with an appreciative gleam in his eyes.

If this represented a positive side of married life to Joseph, he also became privy to its darker sides during his first years in business—marriage being a subject about which he had learned very little in his homeland of white widows and distant men. In America, where even the elderly couples expressed themselves more freely than people half their age in Maida, Joseph at times stood listening with embarrassment as couples argued openly in front of him, differing as to what Joseph should do, or should not do, with the garments they had brought in to be altered—but even Joseph, as naive as he then was, guessed that their feuding was based on something less visible than their clothing. He could almost feel their mutual hostility, and was amazed by the passion some of these older people could generate as they stubbornly insisted that Joseph do this or do that; and not infrequently they tried to draw him into the argument. Wary of exacerbating things by offering his opinion, he reacted with equanimity until he had guessed who was the stronger partner in the marriage. In Italy he would have almost automatically deferred to the men; but in America he was becoming acquainted with the forceful personalities of women. Whenever it seemed that the husband was about to yield, Joseph would quickly side with the wife; and if it was she on the pedestal being fitted for clothes, he would proceed to place the pins with special care, reassuring her constantly that she would be pleased with his final workmanship. Often by this time the husband had retired to a chair and sat with his back to the fitting, pointedly paying no further attention to his wife, engrossed in his newspaper, or blowing smoke rings across the room. At such moments Joseph sometimes felt the woman’s tension rising through his tape measure.

But by 1926, after Joseph had begun his Suit Club, he started to have closer contacts with younger people who were more representative of postwar America. These were people who liked taking chances in his weekly raffle, and who indulged in social life at night, which provided many occasions for dressing up. Now, for the first time, Joseph saw women in the driver’s seats of automobiles that pulled up to the curb near his shop. Unaccompanied by men, they often walked in with an armload of new dresses or coats they had purchased in Philadelphia that required alterations; or they came in to buy one-dollar weekly chances at a free suit.

When Joseph had first installed the sign in his window announcing the establishment of his Suit Club—through which, after paying a five-dollar
initiation fee, members could spend one dollar to print their names and addresses on cards and place them, in unmarked envelopes, in a vase from which a winning envelope was drawn at week’s end by an alternating member—he had made no reference to gender; it had not occurred to him that a woman might want to win a suit that she herself would wear. He assumed the woman with the lucky number would then order that a suit be made for her husband, father, or brother. Tailors did not make suits for women on the island. Some women with dressmakers in Philadelphia occasionally appeared on the island wearing skirts and jackets of matching fabric, but the skirts were usually full and the jackets often puff-sleeved, and they hardly imitated what Joseph would define as a man-tailored suit. In Paris he actually had seen a few women wearing masculine-styled attire—indeed, he had even seen women’s suits with trousers instead of skirts—but Antonio said that these had been cut by couturieres, not tailors, and that the trouser-suited women in France were probably lesbians.

The first female to win the Suit Club raffle did so a few weeks before Christmas in 1926. She was a cigarette-smoking woman in her late twenties or early thirties; she had short dark hair that she seemed to have dyed with a reddish tint, a confident manner and spectacles that suggested an almost professorial air, and a voluptuous body about which she was not in the least self-conscious. Her posture was very erect and her shoulders were held back as she stood for the first time at Joseph’s counter during the late summer, having brought in cocktail frocks to be cleaned and made ready for the Labor Day weekend; and although Joseph had no reason to believe she had seen him previously around town, she nonetheless assumed almost immediate familiarity with him, and by her second visit to his shop she was calling him Joe.

Her name was Elizabeth Townley. She had divorced her husband in Philadelphia and recently had taken a year-round residence in Ocean City, a bayside address near the yacht club. After she had bought three chances for the first week’s raffle in December, she smiled as she left the shop, saying, “I hope you’ve brought me luck, Joe.” When she received Joseph’s postcard announcing that she had won, Mrs. Townley returned to the shop gleefully and asked to be shown some green wool fabric that might be flattering on her. She removed her topcoat and tossed it across the counter, and stood in her tight-fitting skirt and silk blouse waiting in an unhurried and pleasant manner.

“Mrs. Townley,” Joseph asked awkwardly, “are you really planning to have a suit made for yourself?”

“Of course,” she said. “You can make a woman’s suit, can’t you?”

“Certainly,” he said. “I just thought you’d like a gift for your brother, or another man.”

“None of them are worth it,” she said. She leaned closer to the counter and pointed toward a bolt of green herringbone material stacked on the shelf behind him. “That’s rather nice, Joe,” she said. “Let’s have a look at that.” After he had placed it on the counter, Mrs. Townley began to stroke it softly, as if she were petting a cat; then she pinched it between her left index finger and thumb, and rubbed it briskly. “Yes, very nice,” she said. “This will be fine. But you’ll have to be quick about it, Joe, because I’ll want the suit before I go away for Christmas.”

Before he could respond, Mrs. Townley had walked toward the fitting room and stepped upon the pedestal. Joseph watched uncertainly as she stood waiting with her hands on her hips; the outline of her brassiere, supporting her prominent breasts, showed through her sheer silk blouse. Although she was fully clothed, she seemed more naked than the open-shirted Amazon lady Joseph had once seen working in the fields during the olive harvest. Blocking the memory from his mind, he took his tape measure and notebook and moved to a position behind Mrs. Townley, who, standing a foot above the floor, was dauntingly statuesque. Inhaling the fragrance of her perfume, and hearing her soft breath in this now very quiet room, he reached high with his left hand and placed the metal-tipped edge of the tape on the back of her neck. He held it there for a moment while the rest of the yellow tape, hastened by the lightly tapping fingers of his right hand, unfurled down her back and rested against her rump. He pinched the lower part of the tape at the point where he thought the bottom of the jacket should be, recorded this figure in his notebook, then paused before taking the next measurement. Had he been dealing with a man, Joseph would now have been standing in front of him, wrapping the tape around his chest and asking him to inhale and exhale. But Joseph had never taken such liberties with a woman—most of his previous experience with females had been in readjusting hemlines, sleeves, and the shoulders of their coats—and he had no idea about the rules of etiquette. But he certainly knew he could
not
face Mrs. Townley while looping the tape around her back and then pulling it forward to measure her bosom. So he remained behind her; and, in what he hoped was a professional tone of voice, he asked, “Mrs. Townley, would you mind raising your arms, please?”

She raised her arms over her head, reminding him of the drawbridge. He leaned forward and, trying not to bump his nose into her back,
reached around her waist with his arms, then brought his hands together in front of her stomach momentarily while he secured the tape between his fingertips; and finally he raised the tape until he felt it grazing against her sturdy, silk-covered breasts. He arrived at what he thought was the farther point on both sides, and waited for Mrs. Townley to exhale, and then pulled back on the tape and placed the metal-tipped end he held in his left hand against the lowest number on the tape he held around her with his right hand. The tip practically touched the number 44. Despite his lack of experience in these matters, Joseph deduced that Mrs. Townley was enormous. Granting the physical differences between men and women in that area, Joseph was nonetheless aware that her chest size was nearly double his own. The tape slipped from his fingers and fell across her ankles. “Sorry,” Joseph said, bending to pick it up. Mrs. Townley said nothing, and did not move.

With slightly less tentativeness, Joseph now extended the tape to measure her waist (38); then her hips (42). But his hands were perspiring, and he felt slightly dizzy. He had never really been alone with an American woman. In fact he could not remember being alone with
any
woman except the Amazon lady, and that had been in an open field where there had been ample room for his escape after she had caught him looking at her. In the shop he felt trapped. Mrs. Townley’s body was definitely affecting him in a way he knew was sinful.

“May I lower my arms now?” she asked, softly.

“Of course, Mrs. Townley,” he said, having forgotten about her arms. “I’m sorry.”

“And how much longer will this be?” she asked, although she did not seem to be impatient.

“Just a few minutes,” he said, kneeling to measure the width of the skirt she wore, deciding to use the same dimensions for the skirt of her suit. He wrote slowly in his book, not yet ready to stand and take the measurements for the sleeves. The room was so quiet and still that he could hear a fly buzzing within the front windows. It was probably the last survivor from the summer. Then he heard the welcome sound of the doorbell jingling and, leaning his head beyond Mrs. Townley’s hips, he saw Harry Smith, the Ford dealer, standing in the doorway.

“I’ll come back later, when you’re not busy,” Smith said, tilting forward and balancing himself against the outer doorknob that he held in hand.

“Come in, come in,” Joseph said, relieved, “I’m just finishing.”

A heavy, red-faced man in his forties wearing a plain brown fedora
and a thick wool mackinaw of matching color, Smith almost stumbled in and then tipped his hat to Mrs. Townley, who stood with her back to him, but whose profile he saw reflected in a mirror.

“I see you’re putting this young man to work,” Smith said, settling himself in the chair nearest to the pedestal, placing his hat on his knee.

“Yes,” she said flatly, not making eye contact.

“Is that
your
pretty Flint Six touring car I see parked in front?” he went on, watching closely as Joseph now stood alongside her, measuring an arm.

“No,” she said.

“I’m trying to get our friend here to buy a car,” Smith said with a grin. He pointed toward Joseph with his right hand shaped like a pistol, but his eyes remained on Elizabeth Townley.

“I told you, I need a license,” Joseph said, with the tape around one of her wrists.

“Yes, I’ll take care of that,” Smith said. “But I’m here to say I’ve found the perfect car for you.”

“You have?”

Joseph was actually interested. He had been thinking of buying a car for more than a year, but until Smith had come in a fortnight before, he had never discussed it. Smith had been in twice already this week. Each time he offered a car at a lower price. He was new in town, and very eager to make a sale.

“This is only five hundred,” Smith said. “It’s a handsome little Ford coupe. It’s only a year old, and not a thing wrong with it. The guy who owns it needs a bigger car. He’s leaving for Florida this week and wants to sell the coupe right away, and so I thought of you.”

Five hundred dollars was an amount Joseph could afford. He had deprived himself of most comforts since arriving on the island. He lived in a small room behind the shop in order to avoid the cost of an apartment; and the more money he had earned in recent years, the more he had sent home to Italy. By now he had paid off his debts to the Rocchino uncles in Ambler, and had made the final payment to the shop’s previous owner in Arizona. He had by now also taken so many trolley rides across the bay that he finally felt adequate to the challenge of steering himself through what was left of his hydrophobia.

Mrs. Townley stepped down from the pedestal, holding Joseph’s hand momentarily. Smith lit up a cigarette and watched as she moved across the room to the counter. She immediately picked up her coat and put it on.

“I’ll have the pattern cut for you by tomorrow night, Mrs. Townley,” Joseph said, taking his place behind the counter, lighting a cigarette, and completing his notations in his book. “You can come in Monday for a first fitting. Then another fitting by Thursday, and within two weeks from today you’ll have the suit.”

“I appreciate that, Joe,” she said, and with a smile she turned to leave. Joseph hurried around the counter to open the door, blocking Smith’s view of Mrs. Townley as she went down the steps, moved in front of the window, and hurriedly walked up the street.

“Good-looking woman,” Smith said.

Joseph ignored the comment as he closed the door.

“When can I see the car?” he asked.

“I can get it now,” Smith said, quickly rising. “I’ll be back in an hour. You can look it over and we can take a little ride. If you like it, we can go to the bank tomorrow. I’ll get the papers ready for you, and give you a few driving lessons on Sunday. By the next weekend, you should be driving on your own.”