The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [40]
Sal turned around and said, “Give me two cents for a soda, Ma.” The mother, who always gave him two cents, said angrily, “Didn’t you hear what I just told your sister? We are poor. Now go.#8221;
Sal looked at her gravely. She thought with irritation that all her children were too serious. Then Sal said, with the perfect reasonableness of a child, “If you never give me two cents will you be rich?” Octavia let out a shriek of laughter. The mother took her pocketbook and with a straight face gave Sal a silver nickel. Sal ran out of the house without another word.
Lucia Santa shrugged and smiled at Octavia. And yet, the mother thought, if I never gave my children two cents for soda, we might be rich. If I never gave them money for the moving pictures and baseballs, if I made meat only once a week and put on the electric light only when it was pitch dark. If I sent my children to work all year round instead of waiting till they finish high school, if I made them sew buttons on cards at night instead of reading and listening to the radio—who knows?
Thousands of houses had been bought on Long Island by miserly thrift. But it would never work with her family. They would all be miserable, including herself. And it was her fault. She had not rubbed their noses in poverty as a good mother should.
She had no illusions about human beings. They were not evil, not deliberately malicious. But money was God. Money could make you free. Money could give you hope. Money could make you safe. Renounce money? As well ask a man to give up his gun in the wild jungle.
Money guarded the lives of your children. Money lifted them out of darkness. Who has not wept for lack of money? Who has not wept for money? Who comes when money calls? Doctors, priests, dutiful sons.
Money was a new homeland. Lying awake at night thinking of the growing sums in the bank, Lucia Santa felt the sudden physical chilling sharpness mixed with fear that a prisoner feels when counting the days to stay behind walls.
And money was friends, respectful relatives. A new Jesus could never rise to reproach those with money.
Not to be rich, but to have money; to have money like a wall to put your back to, and then face the world.
Octavia knew her mother was thinking about money. Money for doctors, money for clothes, money for the oil stove, money for school books, money for Communion suits. Money for a house on Long Island, and maybe little Sal would be the one to go to college.
And yet, Octavia thought, with all this her mother was careless with money. She bought the best olive oil, expensive cheese, imported prosciutto. She served meat at least three times a week. And many times she called a doctor for the ailing children, where other families would give home remedies and wait for the fever or cold to pass. At Easter time each child had a new suit or dress.
But every few weeks there was five or ten dollars that the mother would give Octavia to put away. There was now over fifteen hundred dollars in the postal savings book that no one knew about except her and her mother. Octavia wondered what the magic signal would be that would make her mother decide to take one of the great steps in a family’s life and buy a house on Long Island.
IT WAS AUTUMN, the children going to school, the nights too chilly to sit on the Avenue, and too much work to do to spend a whole evening in gossip. There were clothes to wash and press, shoes to shine, buttons to be sewn on cards to earn extra money. Oil stoves were brought out of hiding from backyard and cellar. The city changed its lights; the sun became a chilly yellow, the pavements and gutters steely gray. The buildings became taller and thinner and more distinct from each other. You could no longer smell the stone and tar. The air lost its summer solidity of dust and heat. White smoke from bull engines in the railroad yard smelled of nature. It was on the morning of such a day that Frank Corbo came home to his family.
CHAPTER 6
THE BIG CHILDREN were off to school and work. Zia Louche was having a coffee with Lucia Santa.