An Italian Wife (16 page)

C
ONNIE STANDS ON THE FRONT STEPS OF HER CHILDHOOD
home, refusing to move forward. Her husband, Vincent, stands close behind her, breathing heavily in the cold air. He sounds like a dragon, or something about to explode. Like a geyser, Connie thinks. Like Old Faithful. Even thinking about Old Faithful fuels her anger. On the list of things she and Vincent were supposed to do but never have, visiting Old Faithful is number two, right after a honeymoon in Niagara Falls. Instead, they drove as far as Seekonk—only thirty minutes from the hall where her family still sat drinking wine and eating egg biscuits and
wandi
. Vincent had stopped at the first motel he saw. So eager to take her virginity finally, he did not even wait for her to remove her pale-green going-away suit and put on her Champagne-colored negligee. Right then, she should have known. She should have picked up her American Tourister matching luggage and gone to Niagara Falls herself. Now, six years later, it was too late. Connie would never see Old Faithful. Or Niagara Falls. Or do any of the things on her ever-growing list of disappointments.

“I'm fucking freezing, Connie,” Vincent says between snorts, which finally propels her forward.

“Davy,” Connie says, nudging her five-year-old son, “ring the bell.”

But Davy can't reach it. He stands on booted tiptoes and stretches his mittened hand upward.

Connie sighs, worried that Davy will be a short man like his father, worried that this trip home for Christmas will be just one more misguided decision.

“Jesus,” Vincent says, and leans against Connie to ring the doorbell himself.

He doesn't move away from her when he is done. Instead, he presses against her back, making sure she feels that even in the below-freezing temperature, even beneath his long wool coat and gray flannel trousers and white boxer shorts, he has a hard-on. As if he has accomplished something special.

“Jesus,” Connie says.

Davy turns his beautiful face up toward Connie and smiles his perfect baby-teeth smile.

“Happy birthday, Jesus!” he says, and Connie's heart swells with love and pride. Davy is smart. He is beautiful. Despite being conceived on that very night in that terrible motel in Seekonk, Davy is the very thing Connie has always wanted for herself: Davy is special.

The door finally opens, and with it comes a strong smell of fish. Tonight, Christmas Eve, is the
festa dei sette pesci
, the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a reminder to Connie of everything she tried to flee when she married Vincent and moved to Connecticut six years ago. The
festa dei sette pesci
screams immigrant,
guinea
,
wop
. The smell of fish and the dread at this step backward in her life make Connie's stomach do a little flip.

Her sister Gloria stands at the open door wearing a sweater that makes her breasts look as pointy as ice-cream cones and a skirt that hugs her ass. Peeking out from behind that ass is Gloria's daughter, Cammie, her hair in Shirley Temple ringlets and her dress a frilly white confection.

Cammie looks like she belongs on top of a cake, Connie thinks, even as she plasters a fake grin on her face and says, “Look at Cammie! So beautiful!” The girl, Connie decides, will have a hook nose like her father.

“Don't just stand there like guests,” Gloria says, standing back to let them in.

Even then, as Davy goes inside, Vincent doesn't move right away. He has his hands on Connie's waist and he gives her the tiniest shove with his erection before releasing her. Like a teenager, he loves that thing.
I've got a chubby
, he whispers in her ear in bed at night.
A woody. A Johnson. Little Vinny,
he calls it.
Little V.

Still grinning, Connie steps into the kitchen. The smells of fish and perfume and coffee percolating on the stove make her dizzy. All the faces looming toward her with their bright lipsticked lips flapping, their breath of cigarette smoke and anisette cookies, suffocate her.

The next thing Connie knows, she is going down hard onto the green-and-yellow linoleum squares, and someone—maybe her mother?—is shouting
She's fainting! Oh my God!
And then she is down, flat, her head throbbing and spinning at the same time, the sharp ammonia smell of smelling salts burning her nose.

She opens her eyes and tries to make sense of what she sees: Her sister Gloria with those ridiculous tits, her skinny arched brows frowning. Her sister Angie with what Connie hopes is a red wig and not her own hair, sprayed into a strange stiff flip, her eyes lined in heavy black liner and a fake black beauty mark beside her very red lips. Her sister Anna, so pregnant she can hardly kneel without toppling over. Little Cammie, wide-eyed, banana curls bobbing. Her own Davy, his face scrunched up the way he does when he tries not to cry. The smelling salts have been jammed up her nose by her mother, who is kneeling beside her frowning, her faded flowered apron splattered with grease. On the other side, Vincent kneels beside her. Was he smiling? Was that asshole smiling?

Vincent looks up at everyone and announces, “I guess this confirms it. She's knocked-up again.”

Immediately, everyone's worry turns to squeals of happiness.

Connie watches their faces transform. Now they are smiling and their frowns are disappearing. Even her mother is smiling at her, stroking her cheek. She looks at Vincent, smug and proud, trying to decide whether he should be happy or not.

“What's knocked-up, Mama?” Davy says in a breathy voice. “You mean knocked down? Like, you got knocked down to the floor?”

Connie opens her mouth to answer him, but instead of words what comes out is a loud, painful cry that sounds like the cry their cocker spaniel Ziti made when he got hit by a car last fall. Even after Connie is lifted to the green couch and covered in a hand-crocheted afghan; even after Connie's mouth is long closed, she still hears her own awful cry, echoing.

FOR THE PREVIOUS
five Christmases, since Connie married Vincent Palazzo, she stayed home in their small white Cape in Middletown, Connecticut. She did not make seven fishes on Christmas Eve; she made a rib roast and roasted potatoes and string beans amandine. On Christmas morning she served Vincent and Davy French toast and maple bacon. Her family did not eat in the kitchen, they ate in the dining room on the china she bought piece by piece with S & H Green Stamps that she dutifully pasted into a book, filling one after another so that she could get the matching gravy boat and teacups and salad plates—all creamy white with a border of tiny off-white raised flowers. All perfect.

When Connie first met Vincent, she believed he was a man who was going places. By that time, everyone considered Connie a spinster. Twenty-five, without even a prospect of a husband. Twenty-five and a virgin. The only men who asked her out were older, widowers or bachelors with odd habits.

Then Vincent walked into the office where Connie worked in the secretarial pool with his case of Royal typewriters and Connie felt something she had never felt before. An almost unpleasant tug in her groin. It made her squirm in her seat. Vincent—dark-olive skin and green eyes that bulged like a bullfrog's; stiff, shoe-polish-black hair that she would learn only after they were married was a toupee that sat on a mannequin head at night; short, just her height, and round like a barrel—Vincent sat across from her waiting to see the procurer of office supplies and Connie squirmed. She wished she'd curled her hair, freshened her lipstick, worn the sweater with the pearl buttons that looked so flattering.

He smiled at her, showing a row of white teeth as small as baby's teeth.

“How do you like that Remington?” he said, his voice smooth and silky, a voice you wanted to touch.

Connie cleared her throat. “My what?” she asked.

He pointed his chin in the direction of her typewriter. “The Remington,” he said.

She realized her fingers, which had been busily typing when he appeared, had sunk into the keys like melted wax.

“It's a fine typewriter,” she managed to say. Then she blurted, “I graduated from Katherine Gibbs, top in my class.”

Vincent nodded approvingly. “Very impressive,” he said. “Did you learn on a Remington?”

That tug in her groin. It was all she could focus on. An image of the rows of girls—
Katie Gibbs girls—
in their business-smart clothes, fingers sailing across the keys:
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
.

“I'm a Royal man,” Vincent said, leaning closer to her.

She caught a whiff of cologne, strong and spicy.

“Yes,” Connie said, putting her hands in her lap as if that might subdue the tugging. She noticed his hat resting on one of his knees, black with a small red feather in the ribbon.

“Just got promoted to manager at the factory over in Connecticut,” he said proudly.

His boasting, his confidence, only made the tug stronger. She found herself leaning toward him too.

He winked at her. “I'm on my way,” he said, pointing his forefinger upward.

Every cell in her body was shouting,
Take me with you!
She wished he could read her mind.

The procurer's door opened. He beckoned Vincent Palazzo in.

Connie watched Vincent Palazzo walk away without looking back. She thought she might cry when the procurer closed his office door. Taking deep breaths, she went into the ladies' room, grateful to find it empty. Inside a stall, she leaned with her back against the door, wondering what would become of her. She imagined a life with her mother, the two of them crocheting at night, sipping an apricot brandy before bed. She imagined never feeling that tug again, that elusive something that her sister Angie seemed to feel all the time. Angie, who came home with smeared lipstick and a bruised mouth, smelling briny. Younger than Connie by seven years, she'd already broken off three engagements.

Connie knew she should wash her face, apply powder and lipstick, comb her hair. But instead, almost cautiously, she lifted her skirt and rubbed herself, lightly, over her girdle. That tugging, that yearning, would not go away. When she closed her eyes, the image of Vincent Palazzo filled her mind and she could almost smell his cologne again. She rubbed a bit harder, surprised at the way her hips lifted toward her hand. Damn girdle, Connie thought, gripped unexpectedly by the desire to push her hand against her flesh. For an instant, she thought she had urinated on herself. She was wet, and breathing in short gasps.

Somehow she managed to squeeze one hand down her girdle, her fingers reaching, reaching, and then rubbing and rubbing, her eyes closed so that she could picture Vincent Palazzo, and then her breath quickening until something happened, something like falling off a rooftop. Something Connie had never felt before, or even considered feeling.

On wobbly legs she managed to get back to her desk.

Vincent Palazzo stood there, twirling his hat on one finger and whistling “Sentimental Journey.”

“There you are!” he said. “I almost gave up hope.”

Connie tried to smile. Could he tell what she had been doing by the way she looked? She would have to go to confession, right after work, she decided. Surely she had broken a commandment. But which one?

“You like Chinese?” he was saying.

She nodded.

“I like the chicken wings at the Ming Garden. And the chow mein. You like chow mein?”

Vincent Palazzo was asking her out, Connie realized. On a date.

She stood straighter. “Yes, Mr. Palazzo, I do like chow mein. And pork fried rice.”

He grinned. “Good then. I'll see you Friday at six.”

He walked off, whistling “Sentimental Journey” again.

I am going to marry that man, Connie thought as she watched his bowlegged strut. I am going to marry that man and move to Connecticut and never ever come back here again.

She smiled, sat at her desk, lifted her fingers above the typewriter keys, and typed.

“
THE
BACCALA
,
” CONNIE'S
MOTHER SAYS
, “needs to be soaked three times.” She holds up her thumb and the two fingers beside it. “For the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Davy nods solemnly.

Even though one of the many changes Connie has made in her life includes not going to church, Davy holds a fascination for religion, and Jesus in particular. Vincent does the obligatory Catholic duties: Palm Sunday, Easter Mass, and—until this year—midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But enough of the kids at the St. Alphonsus kindergarten practice their faith that Davy has gleaned some of the details.

“Is the Holy Spirit related to the Holy Ghost?” he asks his grandmother as she begins to flour the smelts.

“They're all God,” she answers.

Davy looks confused but doesn't pursue it.

Connie, thick tongued and fuzzy headed, joins them at the table. Silently, she counts the fish spread out there in various stages of preparation. Baccala, smelts, snail salad, octopus, marinated eel, anchovies.

“Six,” she says, after she's counted again. “There's only six.”

“I've got shrimps in the icebox,” her mother says primly.

Connie supposes that her mother will never forgive her for moving away and not coming home to visit. Until now. To her mother, it is probably too late. But to Connie, she has come only out of desperation. The flush of joy over a new grandchild has already faded as her mother remembers the disrespect Connie has shown her.

“Why do we need six fishes?” Davy asks. He has put his hand over his nose and mouth to block out the strong fish smell.

His grandmother shakes her head sadly. “This one, he knows nothing.”

“We eat seven fishes on Christmas Eve,” Connie explains. “One for . . .” She hesitates. “I almost said one for each apostle, but that's wrong.”

For the first time since she's arrived, her mother looks right at Connie, her face so full of disappointment and disapproval that Connie has to catch her breath.