The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [103]
He had grown into a short young man with a husky frame on which there was not a single ounce of extra flesh, so that he appeared rawboned and awkward. His face was dark and unhealthy-looking, and he had a heavy shadow of beard. He should have looked fierce and tough with his craggy features, his thick mouth and heavy nose, but the dark wide eyes were peculiarly defenseless and timid and he rarely smiled. Worst of all for Octavia, his personality had changed. He had always had something engagingly sweet and obliging about him; he had always been kind and thoughtful in a completely natural way. But now, though he was obedient to his mother and put himself out for other people, he followed his courtesies with a sort of bitter, mocking complaint. Octavia would much rather he just told everybody to screw off. She worried about him, but he irritated her, too. He was a disappointment. She smiled grimly at the thought. Aren’t we all? She reflected on her husband alone in the Bronx apartment, reading, writing, waiting for her.
Vinnie growled with sleepy irritation. His voice was deeply masculine, yet childish and petulant. “Ma, why the hell didn’t you wake me up? I told you I gotta go out. If I hadda go to work you woulda woke me up on time.”
Octavia said sharply, “She fell asleep. It’s no picnic taking care of you bastards.”
Lucia Santa turned on Octavia. “Why do you pick on him? He works hard all week. He sees his sister, when? And she curses him. Come sit down, Vincenzo, have some coffee and something to eat. Come, my son, and maybe your sister can find a pleasant word for you.”
Octavia said angrily, “Ma, you’re such a phony.” Then she saw something in Vinnie’s face that made her stop. At first, when his mother reproached Octavia, Vinnie looked smugly satisfied, pathetic with gratitude at her sticking up for him, but when Octavia laughed, he had suddenly realized that he was being softsoaped by his mother. He smiled sourly to think that he could be so easily consoled, and then he laughed with Octavia at himself and his mother. They drank coffee and chatted together with that deep familiarity a close family feels, which keeps them from boring each other, no matter how dull the talk.
Octavia saw Vinnie’s sullen face lighten into tranquillity, and she remembered the gentle sweetness. He smiled and even laughed at Octavia’s stories about being a forelady in the dress shop. He made jokes about his job in the railroad. And Octavia realized how much her brother missed her, how her marriage had broken the pattern of the family—and for what? Oh, she knew what it was now; she heeded its call and her body rose and fell in consummating passion and she could not spurn it now as once she had, but still she was not happy.
No, she was not as happy with her husband as she was at this instant, happy that she had lightened the look of suffering and loneliness on her young brother’s face, caught so naked and fresh from sleep. She had wanted to do so much for him, and had done nothing—and for what? The desire for flesh had been too strong for her and she had found a gentle husband who overcame her fears. There would be no children, and thanks to this and other elementary precautions against fate, she and her husband would rise out of poverty to a better life. She would be happy someday.
When Vinnie was dressed, Lucia Santa and Octavia regarded him with the special fondness women of a family have for their young males. They both imagined Vinnie walking down the street and beating girls off with a stick. They assumed he would have a night of pleasant, conquering adventure, among friends who could not fail to admire and love and cherish him for the prince that they, his mother and sister, knew him to be.
Vinnie put on his blue serge suit and his sleazy silk tie with its great swirling patterns of red and blue. He slicked his hair with water, framing his craggy, sensitive face in neatly combed, symmetrical blocks of heavy black hair.