The Scarlet Thread (16 page)

“Gloria's done a good job,” the beautician said, smiling. “But of course you've got beautiful hands, Mrs. Falconi. Now shall we steam off that cleansing mask?”

An hour later, Clara stepped out of the handsome building on Fifth Avenue. The doorman, uniformed in the distinctive Arden livery, summoned her car. She was going to a charity lunch at the Waldorf.

As soon as she got home, she would call the firm of private detectives who had worked for her before. They had reported on Steven whenever she felt threatened. Nobody knew about this, not even her father. He wouldn't have approved. He liked such things to stay within the family. Clara didn't want the list of professional women who tripped in and out of the duplex on the East Side coming in front of her father. She kept that humiliation to herself. She had come to terms with the whores; they were paid, and they never lasted long. She didn't fear them, and she was able to control her jealousy. Women outside that category were a different matter. Apart from Lita Montini, who had dared flaunt herself to Steven, there were no true rivals. Until that night ten days earlier, when he had gone to dinner at Les A without her: that was when she began to notice the change in him. The detectives could start from there.

“I'm going to my father tomorrow,” Steven said. “My brother will be there too.”

“They'll try to persuade you,” Angela said. “They'll try to talk you out of it.”

“Sure they will,” he agreed. He reached across the table and held her hand. “But my mind's made up. When they know that, when I explain everything, they'll come around to the idea. I know them. They love me. My mother will help; she hates Clara. Don't—worry, sweetheart; it'll all work out.”

“I do worry,” she said. “I worry about you, I worry about Charlie. It's all happened to us so quickly.… Sometimes I'm horribly afraid.”

“I know you are,” he said. “I feel it. But you mustn't be. I know what I'm doing. I know what I want, and that's you and my boy, and nothing is going to stop me.… Shouldn't we be getting back?”

Angela had to smile. “Darling, he's not a baby. He's quite all right in the flat for one evening. He's had such a wonderful time. He never stops talking about you.”

“We get along,” he answered. “I never knew it could be this much fun, having a proper family.”

They'd gone to the theater to see the latest Broadway musical; circled Manhattan island by boat; shopped at Macy's, where Angela had to stop Steven from buying the excited Charlie everything he admired in the sports department. They drove out of town to eat; he never took them to Little Italy, although his son wanted to go there. His friend Jordan had raved about the food there.

Steven and Angela found time to be alone together. Tonight he had chosen a charming restaurant up in Connecticut. It was small and intimate. He never suggested that they go to the duplex. They made love in the little borrowed flat while their son was at the movies or wandering through Central Park. And Steven made plans, plans for their new life together, while Angela listened and forced herself to believe it would really happen.

She didn't doubt him; he meant to do exactly what he said: to break with his family, his background and his old life, and start afresh far away from it all. She loved him for that single-mindedness as much as she loved the total commitment of their physical desire for each other. And the gentleness that accompanied it, the tenderness to her and the overprotective attitude toward his son. As they lay together in the brief times they were alone, he promised her that he would make up for it all: for the long years of coping on her own, of holidays spent working so that young Charlie could have a trip now and then.

Angela let him paint the extravagant pictures because she knew how much pleasure it gave him. A fine house, lots of help; France appealed to him, wouldn't she like to live in France, in the south—sunshine and lots of things for the boy to do when he came home on holiday. A honeymoon, to make up for the one they never had. “So many things I want to give you, my darling,” he would whisper. “To spoil you and reward you for making me so happy. I'm going to make a pet of you. You're going to have everything you've ever wanted.” And he didn't listen when she protested that she only wanted to live happily with him.

“After I've talked to my father,” he said, “we could have a weekend together. Maybe go down to Washington, the three of us. I could show Charlie the Capitol, the White House.… It's a great city. We'd have a wonderful time. Shall we do that, Angelina? Would you like that?”

“I'd love it,” she said.

“Then it's fixed,” he announced. He turned her hand upside down and pressed the palm against his mouth. “Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

“Once or twice,” she teased.

“You'll never leave me, will you?”

“I couldn't,” she said. “You know that.”

“I know,” he said. “I just need you to say it, before tomorrow. Now I'll get the check and we'll drive home. I want to see him before he goes to bed. We can tell him about Washington.”

Lucca Falconi still lived on the Lower East Side. It was a fortress—a four-story building with a garden surrounded on three sides by a high wall, and with more Falconis in the houses opposite and on either side. Lucca and his wife had brought up their sons there; they were fond of the house and the neighborhood.

During the trial of strength with the Musso family, Piero had persuaded his mother to move their living quarters to the back of the house for safety. The windows on the ground floor facing the street were bulletproof and covered with grilles. The garden was a pleasant, shady place with a table and chairs, so they could all eat outside; umbrellas kept off the hot summer sun. The Sunday lunches Clara hated so much were often held in the garden during fine weather.

Lucca enjoyed being out of doors. He liked the security of his high wall and the peace of his garden. He did a lot of business out there instead of in the stuffy rooms inside the house. His wife, Anna, was always buying things they didn't need: tables, overstuffed chairs, oil paintings of the old country. He used to joke about it. “There's a whole industry turning out genuine fakes of views from Palermo just for you,” he liked to say to her. She missed Sicily even after so many years, and she spoke poor English. One reason for giving Steven a good education was that Lucca didn't want him to grow up like the sons of other families: ignorant boys who knew how to use their fists but nothing else. His son had brains.

Piero had had trouble just getting through high school. Not much brains there but a good heart. He was a loyal son, with a lot of his grandfather in him. Lucca Falconi was content with his wife and his sons and his grandchildren. If he had a worm in his belly, it was that barren bitch Steven had married. He blamed himself for that. It was a bad marriage—no children, no comfort for his son—but it had been good for business. He reminded his wife about this when she complained about her daughter-in-law, but he only did it to stop her tongue. In his heart, he was in full agreement with her.

They were together, he and his sons, Steven and Piero, sitting out in the warm autumn weather. Anna had brought a big flask of Chianti and some olives and salami for the men to pick at. They spoke in dialect, as their fathers had done before them.

“My son,” Lucca said to Steven. “My son, what you tell me isn't possible. I'm not awake. I'm dreaming a bad dream.”

“It's no dream, Papa,” was the answer.

“A fuckin' nightmare,” Piero muttered in English. He shook his head, as he'd done several times already.

“A wife and a son,” Lucca repeated. “And you kept this secret from us? From me, from your mama. All these years, and you never spoke of it to us?”

“Forgive me,” Steven said humbly. “It wasn't a secret. It was a grief. I kept it to myself. Such a grief, I wanted to get killed after it happened. I couldn't talk to anyone.”

His father nodded. He remembered only too well his crazy son getting a decoration in the war, risking himself. He'd been angry with him, but proud too. He had the medal and the citation in a big frame in his sitting room. Now he understood the reason.

“You had no right,” his father rebuked him. “You should have told us. We could have helped you.”

“I know,” Steven admitted. He would never argue with his father over a family matter. He respected him too much. “I was wrong. But I come to you now. You call it a bad dream; Papa, to me it's like a miracle. After all these years I find my wife and I find my son. He's a Falconi—he's you and grandfather and me, all in one. And clever too. He studies hard. His mother has brought him up to be a proper man, with pride in himself.” He knew how much this description would please his father. “I'm happy for the first time. For the first time in sixteen years I'm a happy man. I want them with me.”

“It's not possible in New York.” Lucca dismissed it instantly. “It's not possible in Florida. We all know what Clara is. She'd go to that old fart hole, Aldo, and start screaming. Your boy wouldn't be safe. Nor would his mother. It's not possible,” he repeated.

“You could set them up someplace else,” Piero suggested. He was in full sympathy with his brother. He had loved and admired Steven all his life. He had a happy marriage himself, and he doted on his sons and baby daughter. “We've got a big country, for Christ's sake. You could put them in a fine house and visit with them. Once, maybe twice a week. It could be business. Clara wouldn't know the difference.”

Steven poured more wine into his father's glass. Piero shook his head; he scooped up a fistful of olives and dropped them into his mouth. He spat out the stones with force and accuracy. His children loved watching him do it. “Papa's planting olive trees,” the eldest would say, and they all laughed. His children were very spoiled. His wife was not allowed to hit them.

Steven said carefully, “It's not enough. That's why I've come to talk to you. To ask my family to help me. I'd like Mama to be here too. Can I call her?”

“I'll call her,” his father said. He had a wary look that Steven knew well. He was expecting to hear something that he wouldn't like. “Anna! Anna! Come on out here!”

Steven's mother came quickly. She looked at her sons in surprise. This was supposed to be men's talk. Business. Women had no place in it except to serve the men.

Her husband said, “Sit down, Anna. Stefano has some news for you. He wants to tell you something.”

Steven got up and pulled out for her one of the chairs. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled of his childhood: warm, spicy herbs and the violet scent she loved to wear.

“It's all right, Mama,” he said. “It's good news. Don't worry.”

He didn't get the chance to explain anything, because suddenly his father spoke up and told her everything in an angry voice that forbade her to be sympathetic.

“He married an English girl in the war. He married her in our church in Altodonte, so it's a valid marriage. She was carrying a child. He did the honorable thing. I would have supported him and taken her into the family. But he thought she was killed and the child with her, so he said nothing. He came home to us all and said nothing.”

Steven's mother had given a little cry of anguish. Lucca quelled it impatiently. “But it wasn't so. The girl was not killed after all. She is alive, with a son, and Stefano has found her, here in this city. Not two weeks ago. That's what he has already told me. Now he has some more to say that he wants you to hear. So tell us, Stefano. Why is Piero's suggestion not enough?”

Piero hastened to ease his mother's mind. It flustered her when her husband was angry. She had never got over her awe of him.

“I said he could make a home for them over here, but not in New York or Florida, where the families have interests. Someone would find out. Clara would call a vendetta on them. That's what I suggested, Mama.” He glanced across at Steven. “But he says no. He says it's not enough.”

“I want to be with them as my wife and son,” Steven said. He didn't look directly at his father. “As Papa said, it was a true marriage. I married Clara in good faith, but it's not a marriage.”

“No,” his mother agreed in a low voice. “You're right. Thank God there were no children.”

“I am going to leave Clara and live with Angela and my son as a proper family. I lost them once because of what happened in the war. I can't lose them again. I've come to ask for your blessing on what I'm going to do. You and Papa and Piero, my brother.”

“What are you telling me?” his father interrupted. “What are you really saying, Stefano? You can't throw Clara out and bring in another wife and child, without the Fabrizzis declaring open war. Piero is right. It would be a vendetta, down to the last of us and the last of them. Aldo Fabrizzi would never forgive such dishonor to his daughter. So what are you really saying, my son? You're not so clever that I don't see through you.”

Steven said, “You know better than I do, Papa. I can't live with my wife and son anywhere in this country. I have to leave the States. I have to leave the family. I'll tell Clara I'm leaving and going to live abroad. If you disown me as your son, then there will be no vendetta. My wife, Angela, and my son, Charlie, will be safe because no one will know they exist. There won't be a war between you and the Fabrizzis. If I am dead to you, to my own people, then Aldo Fabrizzi will accept that.”

He saw tears spill onto his mother's cheek. She wiped them away with her apron, as her forebears had done in times of grief.

“You want to leave us,” his father accused. “You want to be dead to us? No wife, no son, can mean that much to any man! I heard this sort of talk from you when you came back from the war. I won't listen to it a second time. No! No, Stefano, I won't give my blessing to such a thing. If you do it, you go with my curse!”