The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [56]
Octavia’s head jerked out of the closet. She was angry. There had been a change in Gino the last few months. He had always been irresponsible; but pinned down, with no chance to disappear, he had worked cheerfully and well. Now he was sullen, defiant. He spoiled everything. She frowned at them both. Vinnie was getting just as bad.
Octavia called out, “Ma, look. They washed the whole building with one kettle of hot water. Four flights of stairs and four halls and the ground-floor marble with one lousy kettle of hot water.” She laughed contemptuously.
Lucia Santa said from the kitchen, “Eh, well, as long as it looks a little clean.”
Octavia almost screamed. “How the hell could it look clean with one kettle of hot water?” She heard her mother laugh and she laughed herself. It was such a beautiful morning. The apartment was flooded with yellow light.
The two boys standing there with the mop and pail looked so comical, they hated it so. Their faces were all twisted up with disgust. “All right,” Octavia said, “Vinnie, you help me with the closets; Gino, you wash the windows on the inside. Then you and Vinnie can bring all the junk down in the yard and I’ll finish the windows.”
“Like hell I will,” Gino said.
Octavia didn’t even look at him. “Don’t be smart.”
“I’m going out,” Gino said.
Vinnie and Sal were aghast at Gino’s audacity. None of the brothers ever dared defy Octavia; even Larry took orders from her sometimes. She always pulled their hair and slapped them when they were fresh and did not obey. Once she even hit Larry on the head with a milk bottle.
Octavia was kneeling half in the closet. She said over her shoulder, “Don’t make me get up.”
“I don’t care,” Gino said. “I ain’t washing any goddamn windows, I’m playing stickball.”
Octavia leaped up from the floor and was upon him. With one hand she grabbed his hair, with the other gave him two good slaps in the face. He tried to get away, but she was too strong for him. She held him fast. She pummeled him, though she did not really hurt him. She screamed, “Now you little bastard, say you won’t wash the windows and I’ll kill you.”
Gino didn’t answer. He tore himself free of her with an unexpected burst of strength. He looked at her, not with hate or fear, but with his painfully disarming surprise, his nakedly defenseless bewilderment. Octavia could never get used to that look. She beat Vinnie worse sometimes, so it was not guilt that she felt. And despite her feelings about the stepfather, she never thought of Lena, Sal, and Gino as half sister and brothers. They were her mother’s children.
Lucia Santa came out of the kitchen. She said to Octavia, “Enough, no more. Gino, just wash the two front windows and then go out and play.”
But Gino’s thin dark face was filled now with stubbornness and rage. He said, “I’m not washing no son-of-a-bitch windows.” He waited to see what they would do.
Conciliatingly, tentatively, Lucia Santa said, “Don’t curse, a small boy like you.”
Gino yelled, “Octavia curses all the time. And she’s a girl. You never say anything about her. And with other people she’s such a phony lady.” The mother smiled and Octavia turned her face away to keep from laughing outright. It was true. The boy friends, especially the Panettiere’s son, never dreamed how she swore. They would not dare use words in her presence that she used at home when irritated with her mother or her little brothers. Sometimes, when she was hysterical with rage, she shocked even herself. One of her girl friends had called her the “filthy-mouthed virgin.”
“Good, good,” the mother said. “Just help until lunchtime; then you can go out. The food will be ready soon.” She was aware that Octavia was angry at being overruled, but things had been going so well that she wanted peace in the family.
To her surprise, Gino said defiantly, “I ain’t hungry. I’m going out right now. The hell with lunch.” He took his stick-ball bat out of the corner and turned to leave. He was just in time to receive his mother’s hand, flush in his mouth.
She was angry. She shouted, “Animale. Hard head. You