The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [12]
“Talk about something you understand,” Lucia Santa said. “You are a young, stupid girl and you will be old and stupid. Christ give me patience.” She finished her wine in one swallow, and sighed wearily. “I’m going to bed. Leave the door open for your brother. And my husband.”
“Don’t worry about our beautiful Lorenzo,” Octavia said. She dabbed paint on her nails. The mother stared with distaste at the bright redness, came back into the room.
“What is it now with Lorenzo?” she asked. “He stops work midnight. Why shouldn’t he be home? All the girls are off the street except those little Irish tramps on Ninth Avenue.” She added with mock fervor, “Thank Jesus Christ he only ruins good, decent Italian girls.” She smiled with a touch of pride.
Octavia said coolly, “Larry might stay at the Le Cinglatas’. Mr. Le Cinglata is in jail again.”
The mother understood immediately. The Le Cinglatas made their own wine and sold it by the glass in their own home. In short, they were bootleggers violating the Prohibition laws. Only last week the Le Cinglata woman had sent Lucia Santa three great flagons, supposedly because Lorenzo had helped unload a wagon of grapes. And Signora Le Cinglata had been one of the three married in church by proxy those long years ago in Italy. The shyest, the coyest of them all. Good. There was nothing to be done tonight. The mother shrugged and went to bed.
But first she went into the living room and covered the three boys with a sheet. Then she looked out the open window, down into the dark street, and saw her husband still pacing up and down Tenth Avenue. She called softly, “Frank, don’t stay too late.” He did not look up at her or see the sky.
Finally she was in bed. And now she was reluctant to go to sleep, for it seemed to her that as long as she was awake she controlled, in some measure, the actions of her husband and son. She felt annoyance, a real displeasure, that she could not make them leave the world and enter their home, sleep when she slept.
She reached out. The infant was safely trapped against the wall. She called out, “Octavia, sleep, go to bed, it’s late. You work tomorrow.” But really because she could not sleep when anyone in the house was still awake. And then her daughter passed through the room without a word, rebellious.
In the heavy summer darkness sighing with the breath of sleeping children, Lucia Santa pondered over her life. Marrying a second husband, she had brought sorrow to her first child. She knew Octavia held her guilty of not showing proper grief. But you could not explain to a young virginal daughter that her father, the husband whose bed you shared, whom you were prepared to live with the rest of your life, was a man you did not really like.
He had been the master, but a chief without foresight, criminal in his lack of ambition for his family, content to live the rest of his life in the slum tenements a few short blocks from the docks where he worked. Oh, he had made her shed many tears. The money for food he had always given, but the rest of his pay, savings-to-be, he spent on wine and gambling with his friends. Never a penny for herself. He had committed such an act of generosity in bringing Lucia Santa to the new country and his bed, beggar that she was without linen, that he had no need to be generous again. One deed served a lifetime.
Lucia Santa remembered all this with a vague resentment, knowing it was not all truth. His daughter had loved him. He had been a handsome man. His beautiful white teeth chewed sunflower seeds and the little Octavia would accept them from his mouth as she never did from her mother. He had loved his daughter.
The truth was simple. He had been a kind, hard-working, ignorant,