An Italian Wife (24 page)

On the ride to Vermont, Mama Jo keeps surprising him with treats that she pulls from her big black bag.

“Mama Jo,” Roger says in the car as he leans his head against her arm, “will you teach me how to cook someday?”

Mama Jo pats his head.

“Do you think Davy's dead?” Roger asks her.

“Morto,”
Mama Jo says.

MIA is better, Roger knows that. MIA means living with buffoonish officers like on
Hogan's Heroes
. Even though his father explained that Hogan isn't MIA, he's a POW, a prisoner of war, Roger still pictures Davy performing zany antics at a camp.

But when Mama Jo says “
morto”
with such decisiveness, Roger sits up straight.

“He's dead?” he asks her.

“Eh,” she says, raising her hands in defeat.

IT IS ALREA
DY
DARK
when they get to Vermont. Mama G puts a quarter in the coin slot on his bed and Roger lies there as the bed rocks back and forth. In the morning they will let him swim in the pool before they continue north to Sister Sebastian's convent. For now, Mama Jo and Mama G are tired. They climb into the bed across from his, both of them in long white nightgowns. Mama G has three pink curlers on the top of her head, and Mama Jo has taken all of the bobby pins out of her hair to reveal a long white braid. In no time, they are both asleep.

But Roger can't sleep. The room is too dark and it smells strange. He wishes he had Mike Nesmith with him. The dummy is not cuddly, but it would be nice to feel its weight beside him on the bed, to maybe see its white teeth in the dark. Every time Roger closes his eyes, he thinks about Davy being dead instead of playing tricks on a group of Ho Chi Minhs. That thought makes him so scared he calls Mama Jo's name out loud.

“Basta,”
she says in a tone that lets him know he should be quiet.

Roger squeezes his eyes shut. He tries not to miss Mike Nesmith. He tries not to think about being dead. Or how his most secret wish has maybe come true. He tries not to think about what will become of his mother now that she doesn't have Davy to love. To calm himself, he thinks about Mama Jo. Once he saw a picture of her as a young woman, before most of her teeth fell out and before she got so many wrinkles, and she looked almost pretty. In school he had to make a family tree and his mother said,
Be sure to put everyone's American names, sweetie
.
Okay
, Roger said.
But what's Mama Jo's American name
? His mother had to think hard before she answered,
Joanne.

But lying here in the dark with Mama Jo snoring softly and the room a heady mix of the cheese in her purse and the mildewed carpet and Black Jack gum, Roger doesn't care what his mother says. He isn't American. He's Italian. He can feel it seep inside him. Someday he will be able to stir the polenta with that big wooden spoon until it is done. No lumps. He will be able to speak fluent Italian so he can talk to Mama Jo about her long life, and he will carry pepper biscuits in his pockets to nibble during the day. He will change his name so that everyone knows he is Italian. Roger is a terrible American name. So is Debra, his sister's name.
So is Davy
, Roger whispers to himself.

He will become an Italian superhero. He will become Captain Macaroni, the bravest Italian ever. Captain Macaroni can fly and cook and be invisible. But his biggest superpower is that Captain Macaroni will never die.

Maybe he fell asleep. Or maybe time just went by. But as Roger lies there, he feels something changing. His arms and legs grow hard and rigid. Daylight peeks in through the heavy curtains, and in its soft silver light Roger can see his transformation. His legs are lasagna noodles, his arms long strands of spaghetti. His torso is rigatoni, his ears two perfect orecchiette.

From the other bed, Mama Jo lets out a long, low fart and begins to stir awake.

“Roger?” she says.

But he cannot answer her. He cannot move his penne fingers or his small shell toes. He is ziti and ravioli and gnocchi. He is Captain Macaroni.

“Roger?” Mama Jo says again, and her voice is anxious.

Roger wishes he could answer her. He wishes she would just look over at him, silent and happy in his hard, empty shell. She wishes she could see that he is Captain Macaroni, protected, loved, invincible.

The Boy on the Bus

“
 
I
'M RUNNING AWAY,” AIDA WHISPERS INTO THE DARKNESS
of the Greyhound bus as it hurtles west.

It is her nightly ritual. This is her third night on the bus. A week ago, she bought a Greyhound “See the USA” pass for ninety-nine dollars. She stole the money from her sister, Terry, who got it from selling pot. Terry kept her earnings in her underwear drawer and the night before Aida bought the pass, when she was babysitting for Terry's baby, Dylan, she went into the bedroom, opened the cigar box, and pulled out three hundred dollars: one hundred for the “See the USA” pass, two hundred for expenses.

She has only gotten as far as Pittsburgh, but that is farther than Aida has ever been in her life. Once, her aunt Francie and Mama Jo took her along on a car trip to see fall foliage in Vermont. Aida got carsick on the winding back roads and Aunt Francie worried about the upholstery. They came home three days later, exhausted from each other. In seventh grade she took a class trip to Mystic, Connecticut, where they climbed aboard old schooners and fishing boats, ate lunch at Burger Chef, then toured historic homes. Aida bought a white bracelet made from rope that she hasn't taken off in four years. Last year Terry took her to Boston. She made Aida drive even though she only had a learner's permit because, as Terry said, “I'm too wasted.” Aida hadn't even learned to merge yet, but she drove Terry's baby-blue Bug all the way into the city, Terry red-eyed and stoned the whole way, her head lolling all funny and her fingers twitching in time to the eight-track Aztec Two Step tape stuck inside. That stupid tape played over and over because no one could get it out and the radio was busted.

That was it: puking in Vermont, a school trip to Mystic, and a drug deal in the Combat Zone in Boston, Aida looking the other way the whole time, keeping busy by deciding what she would order at the Chinese restaurant, Terry's way of thanking her for driving. But now, here she was, alone, on a Greyhound bus leaving Pittsburgh. The city had a funny green tone and smelled like chemistry class.

The woman beside Aida also smelled sour. She kept muttering, “I'll show him. Yes, I will. I will show that man. Hmmph.” In front of her sat two women wearing large hats. One hat was red and decorated with plastic cherries; the other one was yellow and covered with silk flowers. Even in the dark, Aida could see those cherries and flowers dipping and bobbing as the women wearing them bent their heads together, talking conspiratorially.

“I'm running away,” Aida whispered again, loving the way it sounded in the still bus.

“So am I,” came a voice from across the aisle.

Aida's breath caught. She squinted to see who had said it. A boy, maybe nineteen years old, grinned back at her. He was smoking a cigarette. He had a dimple in his chin, like Kirk Douglas, and a good suntan.

“You weren't supposed to hear that,” Aida said. If anyone knew she was only seventeen years old and running away from home, she would be hauled off this bus and sent back to Rhode Island.

“Then you shouldn't keep saying it,” he said, smiling his white teeth at her.

“Hmmph,” Aida said, just like her seatmate. She folded her arms across her chest and focused straight ahead at the hats.

The boy leaned toward her. “I'm supposed to get
married
,” he whispered. “On Saturday.”

He smelled good. Like cigarettes and aftershave. Now that his head was in the aisle like that, she saw that he was as cleanshaven as a person could be and had short hair and no sideburns. She frowned. She hadn't seen a guy with so little hair since her cousin Davy shipped off to Vietnam. She thought of Davy and made a quick sign of the cross, hoping the boy didn't see her doing something so uncool. May he rest in peace, she thought, then dropped her hands.

“What are you?” Aida said, not bothering to whisper. “In the Army or something?”

“Not anymore,” the boy said, and sat back in his seat.

The
Army
? Aida thought. Ugh. She opened her book,
The Tin Drum
, by Günter Grass, and pretended to read. It was about a dwarf during World War II, and sad. Aida didn't really like the book; she'd preferred
To Kill a Mockingbird
, which they'd read in tenth grade. And
Lord of the Flies
. Also from tenth grade. But books like that looked young, schoolgirlish, not the kind of books a person took with them to run away. In her overnight bag she had
Siddhartha
,
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
, and Rod McKuen's book of poetry,
Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows
. Stanyan Street was in San Francisco, and that was where she was headed.

“You ever read
Lord of the Flies
?” the boy asked. He was leaning toward her again, his head jutting out into the aisle, bouncing along with the movement of the bus.

“In high school,” Aida said, not taking her eyes from her book.

“That's what Vietnam was like,” he said. “No shit.”

Aida swallowed hard. All spring, when she imagined this bus trip across the country, she always imagined meeting a boy. A boy with a guitar who sang Simon and Garfunkel songs as the bus rolled toward California. She and the boy would fall in love, and walk in meadows filled with wildflowers like in the Herbal Essences commercial. He would wear a flowing shirt, Guatemalan, or Mexican, kind of like Donovan. They would have their first kiss in a rainstorm. Aida sighed. Never, in any of her fantasies, was the boy she would fall in love with on a bus a Vietnam vet. Every day last year she had worn a black armband to school to protest the war. Baby killer, she thought, turning the page she had not read. Hawk.

“What are you running away from?” the boy asked her.

She glanced at him. His eyes were light, blue or maybe green; it was hard to tell in the dark. He had small ears. Usually, you didn't see a boy's ears because his hair covered them. This boy's ears looked like seashells.

“Like I said,” he continued, “I'm running away from my wedding. How about you?”

“I'm moving to San Francisco,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No shit!” he said. “Me too. Guess we're together for the long haul.”

He lit another cigarette. “Smoke?” he said.

Aida shook her head. “I only smoke clove cigarettes,” she said. This wasn't true, but she had seen them in a head shop in Providence, where her sister, Terry, sold her homemade hash pipes. Terry and her husband carved the pipes themselves out of soapstone. One day, while Terry was dropping off a load of new ones, Aida had seen the small square packages of clove cigarettes, red and covered with Hindu signs and letters. Aida knew that if she ever smoked anything, it would be clove cigarettes. She had considered asking Terry to buy her a pack. Terry would have; she didn't care what Aida did. Terry only cared about getting stoned. Her whole life revolved around scoring good pot, windowpane LSD, and magic mushrooms. She and her husband spent all their time at the pay phone in the gas station down the street from their apartment making drug deals. For this reason, Aida did not feel guilty for stealing their money.

“Clove cigarettes?” the boy said, sucking on his Winston. “Interesting.” Then he sat back in his seat and didn't say anything else until the bus stopped somewhere in Ohio.

AIDA LOVED THE
BUS STATIONS.
They were dirty and gray and smelled like pee, every one of them so far. Usually a janitor was mopping the floor. Usually people were sleeping on the benches. Usually, the ladies' rooms were out of toilet paper, or a toilet had flooded, or someone had left poop without flushing. Aida loved getting food from the vending machines: cheese sandwiches cut into perfect triangles, slightly stale and tasting of cardboard; watery hot chocolate that was tepid at best; M&M's; Fritos.

Aida stood in front of the row of vending machines, making her choices. Across the room, a fat man with a wandering eye mopped the floor and sang, “Hit the Road, Jack,” in a booming baritone. She spotted a cheese sandwich and carefully counted out three quarters. Just as she reached to put in the first coin, a hand stopped her.

The Vietnam vet.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, like someone on a football team.

“Let me buy you some real food,” he said. He jerked his thumb toward a diner attached to the bus station. Through a plate-glass window, Aida could see uniformed waitresses, slouched and weary, pouring coffee for the passengers from her bus.

“I like these sandwiches,” she said.

“Ah, get one next time. We're here for an hour anyway.” He tugged on her arm and she followed him, lagging behind so he didn't get the wrong idea. He wore khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. She could see the white of a T-shirt poking out behind the collar. She wondered how he could wear long pants and long sleeves in July. Wasn't he sweating to death? Maybe he was wounded, she thought. Maybe he had scars. This made her like him more, and she quickened her pace to catch up.