The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [110]
Larry said drily, “Don’t worry, the cops got their nose in everything.”
Louisa poured coffee for the mother. Her beautiful heavy face, usually placid, was also worried. She was fond of Vinnie—she knew him better than anyone except his mother, and she felt the absence strange. “Larry, please go and look,” she said.
This was so unusual for her that Larry gave up. He patted his mother on the shoulder. “I’ll go up to Vinnie’s office, O.K., Ma? Now let me finish my coffee.” And so Lucia Santa had to go back upstairs and wait.
At three o’clock Gino and the children came home from school, and still Larry had not returned. The mother tried to make Gino stay with her, but he seemed not to understand. He fled without even answering, stopping only to grab his football. Sal and Lena did their homework on the round kitchen table and she fixed bread with olive oil and vinegar for them. Finally, at five o’clock, Larry came to tell her that Vinnie was not at work and that nobody had heard from him. She could see that Larry was worried, too, and she began wringing her hands and calling on God in Italian.
LOUISA CAME UPSTAIRS with her children and tried to quiet the mother. In the turmoil no one heard the other footsteps coming up behind her. Suddenly there was the black uniform of a railroad Bull in the doorway, beside him the gray face of the Panettiere. The Panettiere stepped in front of the Bull, as if to stop Lucia Santa from seeing and hearing him, unconsciously holding both his hands up, palms toward her, in a gesture of such unutterable pity that Lucia Santa was struck dumb. It was Louisa who suddenly wailed in terror.
GINO WAS SITTING quietly on the Hudson Guild stoop with his friends when Joey Bianco came by and said to him, “You better go home, Gino, there’s a lot of trouble at your house.”
Gino rarely saw Joey Bianco anymore. They had grown out of their comradeship, as children do, and now they felt embarrassed by each other. So Gino did not try to stop Joey as he kept walking, or ask him what had happened. He almost didn’t even bother to go home, but then decided to see what it was all about.
He short-cutted diagonally across Chelsea Park and ran easily along Tenth Avenue until he reached the corner of 30th Street. Then he saw a crowd in front of his tenement and started walking very slowly.
There was no one from the family in the crowd. Gino ran up the stairs and into the apartment.
It was thronged with neighbors. In the corner by the window Gino saw Sal and Lena standing stiff and alone, faces blank with fright. Part of the crowd eddied away, and he could see his mother seated in a chair. Dr. Barbato was holding a needle in the air. Larry was gripping his mother with all his strength to keep her from bucking up and down in convulsions.
She looked horrible, as if the muscles connecting each feature of her face to the other had been smashed. Her mouth was twisted oddly and she seemed to be trying to speak. Her eyes had the peculiar direct stare of the blind. The lower part of her body was jerking up out of her chair and then Dr. Barbato’s arm flashed as he stabbed the needle into her arm. Then he stood over her and watched.
Slowly, Lucia Santa’s features flowed together in some sort of peace. Her eyelids closed down and the tension went out of her body.
“Put her to bed,” Dr. Barbato said. “She’ll sleep now for an hour. Call me when she wakes up.”
Larry and some of the women carried Lucia Santa into the bedroom. Gino saw he was standing next to Teresina Coccalitti. Very low, the first time he had ever spoken to her, he asked, “What happened to my mother?”
Zia Teresina was glad to tell him. It was her pleasure this black day to set one thing right. “Oh, nothing happened to your mother,” she said, measuring her words. “It is your brother Vincenzo. They found him in the railroad yards run over by an engine. As for your mother, that’s what happens to parents when they grieve for their children. Show a little pity for her now.”
Gino remembered