The Fortunate Pilgrim - Mario Puzo [82]
“Octavia, Octavia, stop,” Lucia Santa shouted in horror. She turned to the young man to explain. “She is ill, she has a fever.” But Mr. La Fortezza was flying through the door and down the stairs. He had left his brown parcel behind him. His face as he fled was the face of a man caught redhanded in the most shameful of sins and it was a face they never saw again. Two weeks later there was a new investigator, an American old man, who cut their relief down but told them the money in trust was not counted by welfare as assets of the family, since the magistrate could release the money only in some dire need for a particular child, and one child’s money could not be used for the other two children or for the mother.
But the final scene with Mr. La Fortezza was one that Gino and Vincent never forgot. They shook their heads at the girl’s terrible cursing. They resolved with all their hearts that they would never marry a girl like their sister. But at least now it ended that atmosphere, that special treatment accorded to the sick, the strain of politeness toward a member of the family who returned from the hospital or from a long voyage. There was no question. This was the Octavia of old. She was well again. Even the mother could not remain angry at her daughter’s behavior, though she never understood her indignation with Mr. La Fortezza. After all, everyone must pay to stay alive.
CHAPTER 13
THE DAY THE letter came from Ravenswood, Octavia did not read it to her mother until all the children were in bed. It was a very short, official communication saying that the father could be released to his family on a trial basis if his wife would sign papers. It made plain that he would need constant care and supervision. With the letter came a questionnaire to be filled out. It asked the ages of the children, the income of the whole family and of each of its members. With it all, the letter made clear that the father was still an invalid, even though he was fit to be released.
Lucia Santa sipped her coffee nervously. “But he is not really well, then, they just want to test him,” she said.
Octavia wanted to be absolutely fair. “He is all right. He just can’t work or do anything. He has to be taken care of like a sick person. Maybe after a while he can go back to work again. Do you want him back?” she asked. She cast her eyes downward and blushed, for she was thinking shameful things of her own mother.
Lucia Santa watched her daughter’s blush with interest. “Why would I not?” she asked. “He is the father of three of my children. He earned our bread for ten years. If I owned a donkey or a horse who had worked so hard, I would treat him kindly when he was sick or in his old age. Why should I not want my husband back?”
“I won’t make any trouble,” Octavia said.
“There will be trouble enough,” Lucia Santa said. “Who can tell, he may do the children harm. And who can live those years over again? We would all have to suffer, risk our lives to give him another chance. No, it’s too much, too much.”
Octavia said nothing. They sat together for hours, or what seemed like hours, Octavia holding pen and ink bottle and writing paper ready to send an answer to the sanitarium.
The mother brooded over her problem. She remembered stories of similar cases, of loved ones returning to their homes and committing murders and other crimes in their madness.
She thought of her daughter Octavia, who would suffer, be driven into leaving her home, to marrying early to get out of the house.
It could not be risked. In full knowledge of what her decision meant (in her mind she saw the image of an animal encaged in iron and brick for countless years), she consigned her husband, the father of her children, the sharer of that one summer of delight, to a human and earthly eternity of despair. Lucia Santa shook her head slowly and said, “No, I won’t sign. Let him stay where he is.