Happy Family (2 page)

B
illy Beal runs. He runs because his pops insists he train year-round despite the fact that high school baseball season doesn't start until the spring. He runs in the predawn darkness, accelerating his pace when he feels the headlights of Pops's station wagon lick the back of his legs. It's all uphill from here—he'll have to beat his time from yesterday or do another ten miles. “You're falling behind,” Pops yells, “get a move on, Billy Beal. Motivate.” It doesn't matter that Billy Beal was the only East Trenton High School junior to play in the Great Northern League Baseball Tournament, or that, with his team trailing five to three in the third inning, he came in and struck out the side for six innings in a row, paving the way for his team's championship victory. He can always do better.

This morning, like almost every morning for the past two weeks since the girl left her baby in the clinic, Billy Beal's brain is stuck in a groove. Each day it gets worse because it's one day closer to the start of school and one less chance he's got of seeing her again. When school begins, he will have done his community-service hours and will have no excuse to go back to the clinic. What if she comes to pick up her baby the day after he leaves? Then he'll never see her again. If he never sees her again, he can't give her back the charm she'd left among the dirty towels. He'll say something like: “I think you forgot this.” Of course the charm won't be what she's coming back for, he knows that. Just like he knows she didn't abandon her baby, at least not forever. “You're a romantic, Billy Beal,” Moms had said when he told her the girl would be back.

“Focus, son,” Pops shouts out of the station wagon's open window. They've reached the bottom of the hill, and Billy Beal's American Legion T-shirt has a dark V of sweat at the neck. He would have pitched in the American Legion World Series in California last month if he hadn't gotten involved playing lookout for Manny Cannerni's liquor-store robbery. Eight weeks of community service at the worst clinic in Trenton was getting off light, the judge had said. Billy Beal never thought about anything other than the baseball he was missing as he pushed dirt around on the floor of the clinic. Until the girl came in.

She didn't look like anybody he'd seen before. Certainly nothing like the girls who went to his high school. If she had gone to his school, he would have wanted to ask her to homecoming—if he'd ever go to a dance or dare to ask a girl her name. True, he wasn't seeing the girl in the best of circumstances—there was a lot of puffing and heaving going on—but she had clean nails and a nice dress. It didn't matter that she didn't have shoes; she had pretty feet. She didn't scream when nobody paid attention to her, or freak out about the vomit on the floor. He thought she looked at him when he was mopping around her; she noticed him. Which was unusual because Billy Beal felt invisible except on the pitcher's mound.

As far back as Billy Beal can remember, his world has been dominated by men: Pops, his two older brothers, and everything baseball. If high school girls were prey to the letter-jacket-aphrodisiac effect, Billy Beal was unaware of it. The girls he knew—cousins who smelled like corned beef from working part-time in the deli—were like old socks. His brothers didn't bring girls to the house; they went to Asbury Park with beers they'd pilfered from the deli and came home with hickeys on their necks. But Billy Beal wasn't blind. He noticed how girls changed in high school: their circle-pinned shirts got tighter, their pleated skirts shorter, and everywhere he looked there were legs. Legs in the bleachers, legs crossing and uncrossing under the desks. Girl legs that were frighteningly downy and soft; coltish thighs and calves speckled with blond hair, ankles covered with bobby socks that would sometimes slip down to expose a curve of bone.

None of this came close to preparing Billy Beal for the pregnant girl. The few times he'd seen women come into the clinic to have babies, they were taken behind a curtain, and he'd drown out their cries by running baseball stats in his head. The inner workings of femaleness made him squeamish. The last thing he wanted to see was a baby coming out of a girl—especially a girl his age. He stared at a scraped-up patch of linoleum on the floor and inhaled the ammonia vapors from his bucket. Then Sylvia was snapping her fingers at him, saying, “Are you deaf? I asked for towels!” The girl was losing a lot of blood. He'd gotten down on his hands and knees and scraped up all kinds of clots and body fluids but he'd never associated those remnants with a face before. Billy Beal not only looked at this girl's face, he memorized its contours. She didn't frighten or shock him. Her face was soft as she turned toward him, and he could swear her eyes flashed out a message to him in code. I know you, Billy Beal, they said.

Billy Beal thinks about the girl's eyes, which were practically transparent, like drained Coca-Cola bottles, like he could see through them right into her. Was she doing the same to him? Billy Beal runs past their mailbox, might have kept going but for Pops yelling and holding up his stopwatch: “Made it by three-tenths of a second. Sometimes I think you're somewhere else, I swear to Christ.” They're walking in the front door, which has a perennial Christmas wreath nailed on it, and Billy Beal's mouth is a desert. “Peg? Peg? Did that goddamned Ralphie take the extra keys, because I couldn't find them. Peg, goddamn it!” Pops looks up and there's Moms with that crooked smile of hers, holding out the extra keys to the deli. Her long silver hair is still restrained in its nighttime net, and her face is rumpled like an unmade bed. “Well, why didn't you say something?” Pops says, barreling past her toward the kitchen, where breakfast is ready and waiting.

Billy Beal is at the icebox, guzzling milk from the bottle, leaning into the cool electric air, when it occurs to him: they should take the girl's baby. “We should take the girl's baby,” he says.

“What?” Moms says.

“We should take her baby,” he repeats, because it makes perfect sense.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Pops says, looking up from his plate of bacon and eggs.

“He's not talking about anything, close the door, Billy, you're using the electricity up.”

Billy Beal wipes milk off his mouth with the back of his hand, “Just for a little while, until she comes back. It's the right thing to do. That's what you'd say, Moms—”

Pops jumps out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Jesus Christ, you know about this, Peg? I can't believe it! I can't believe you snuck behind my back and knocked someone up…who is it? Who's the little slut? How the fark did this happen, you son of a bitch? ” “Hey, now,” Moms says, moving her body between Pops and her son. “Get the hell out of the way, woman. You can't protect him on this.” Pops puffs his chest out like an ape. “I'm going to kill you, Billy Beal. You're going to wish you'd gone to jail by the time I'm through with you!” “Al, Al, Al, you've got it wrong.” Moms waves her hands. Pops pushes her out of the way and thumps on his son's chest, pushing him backward into a chair. “What's the matter with you, huh?” Thump. “Are you a moron?” Thump. “You got a baseball scholarship to think about, you farking idiot, you farking fool. You got shite between your ears—” Pops jumps on the floor and wrestles with Billy, trying to get him in a headlock.

“Al, Al, Al,” Moms screams, pulling on his shirt, “it's not his baby!”

“I'm going to farking strangle you…” Pops uses weight to his advantage—he's about to sit on his son when Moms screams in his ear: “Al, stop! I said it's not his baby!” Pops looks up at Moms, and Billy gets out from under.

“Jesus, Pops,” Billy says, holding up his hands in disgust.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Pops says to Billy. “You scared the shite out of me. I should pop you one just for that.” Billy Beal looks down at the floor, pictures all two hundred and thirty pounds of his father running while he drives the station wagon up his ass.
Die,
he thinks,
die
.

“Farking baby, what's he got to do with a baby?”

“It's a good idea,” Billy says, staring into the mid-distance.

“If I were you, I'd leave well enough alone…”

“Okay.” Pops slams down his cup, sending rivulets of coffee out into the universe. “Since when does he have ideas that I don't know about? What the fark's going on?”

“Get upstairs, Billy.”

“But you said I have to eat—”

“The two of you are stepping on my last goddamned nerve…”

Moms swoops up Billy's plate of food and hands it to him. “Go,” she says, waving him off. “Shoo, shoo…” Moms's eyes mean if he has any hope of getting her on his side he better scram right now.

“Lucy, you've got some 'splaining to do,” Pops says without a trace of irony.

Billy Beal paces across his bedroom floor, making the boards squeak because he can. He hates being treated like a little kid, being told to go to his room. He hates it when Moms babies him and Pops jumps on his neck, blaming him for everything.

His idea is genius. It's so simple he doesn't know why he didn't think of it sooner. Moms taking the baby would solve everything. The girl would come to him, and Moms would tell her how it was he, Billy Beal, who saved her baby from being what Moms called a ward of the state. The girl would be so grateful she'd agree to go get a root beer with Billy and he could make a cord for her pendant and put it around her neck as a surprise. And Moms is so good with kids she'd help the girl take care of her baby and maybe the girl would stick around awhile. Moms did it for total strangers and the girl, well, it's not exactly like he knows her, but after what they went through, it feels like he does. Moms has to be on his side on this one, she just has to.

It takes Moms a while to tell Pops the story about the girl and her baby, mainly because Pops's frequent eruptions and subsequent spills slow her down. He's finally stopped flailing enough that she can start in on the juice and coffee that have found their way onto his pants. “I don't know why he cares, but he cares. It's the first time I've seen him care about anything other than baseball. He's showing a bit of compassion, which is more than I can say for you.” Moms dabs his pants with a moistened towel.

“Compassion? For a nigger slut who leaves her own baby in a clinic? That girl's never coming back and you know it. It's the goddamned state's problem, not ours. You're rubbing it in, not taking it out!”

“I've got to blot. And she's white, not that that should make a difference.”

“You're not saying you think this is a good idea, are you? Because if you did, I'd say you're out of your farking skull. Or I'd think this isn't about the boy, it's about you. How many times do I tell you, my wife doesn't work! I provide for this family, and, what, the deli's not doing well enough for you? You want to go back to running crumb-crunchers nobody wants through here like it's a farking summer camp? I let you do that
once
and you're forever throwing it in my face. Fostering, you'll be fostering a bruise on your head, woman, if I hear one more word out of you.” He spits when he talks, white gunk starting to form at the corners of his mouth.

“You're way out of line, Albert Beal,” Moms says, dropping the towel. She turns her back on him and starts to do the dishes. The only thing that breaks the silence between them is the rush of water from the faucet and the timpani of rubber gloves on porcelain.

Billy Beal heard Pops calling the girl a slut. Forget that the walls are thin; Pops communicates in only two forms: loud and louder. He could take his father; he's known that for a while. He's strong and quick—he doesn't have to let himself be pushed around. Billy Beal hasn't heard a peep from downstairs in a while. He hates his parents' silence more than their fighting.

Pops and Moms sit in the kitchen listening to the tick of the Budweiser wall clock that Pops got for free at Wally's Liquor Shop. After what feels like forever, Moms says, “Okay, then. I accept your apology. And I was thinking, with Terry taking off for the South Pacific—”

“It's not in the South Pacific,” Pops says.

“Wherever it is, we'll have an extra room.”

“It's off China, what's it called? Where's Ralphie? He knows. Ralphie! Ralphie!” There's no response. “Don't tell me he didn't come home again!”

Elvis's “Good Luck Charm” starts playing so loud Moms has to raise her voice:

“Can we stick to Billy? If we did it, I'm saying
if,
it would only be temporary, until they could find a home for the child.” Pops goes to the closet and grabs a broom. He punches the handle against the ceiling. “Turn that shite down, goddamn it! And you, don't you go thinking I'm considering it because I'm not.” Moms hands Pops a sack lunch she made for Billy last night.

“Viet Nam,” she says. “They're sending Terry to a place called Viet Nam.”

C
arlotta Matzner gets goose bumps when her husband blows on the back of her neck. Tonight he's doing it to cool her off; the late-summer nights are hot, even in the country, otherwise known as Montclair, New Jersey.
“Scopa me,”
she whispers. He loves it when she speaks Italian, especially when she talks dirty. She could be reciting the phone book right now and it would sound sexy.
“Scopa me con tuo cazzo duro,
Solomon.” Even though they have no family left to share their happiness with, this was worth it.

She's burning him up, and at this rate, Sol won't be able to last. “Aiiieeeeeee!” she cries.

“What? What did I do?” he says, pulling out.

“Aiiiieeeeeeee!”

“Are you okay, did I hurt you? Where? What,
chérie
, tell me?”

“Solomon, the baby, he arrive. You stir him with you generals!” Her eyes are earnest; he wants to be concerned but her malapropisms slay him. “Oh,
chérie,
no,” he says, trying not to laugh. “You're just having a cramp, remember, like the one the other night, and the day before? Nothing to worry about.”

“This is no like the last time. We make him arrive, we should no be doing this.
Porca Madonna, la minchia,
it hurts.”

“Breathe,” he says. She breathes and he breathes; they breathe.

“For a second there, you scared me,” he says. “But trust me, the baby's totally protected in there, from things much bigger than the mister here.”

“
Pronto,
Solomon,” she says, “call
dottore, per favore.
”

Panic happens often, though never while they are making love. Rationality doesn't work when Cici is like this, so there is no point in saying you can't bother a doctor in the middle of the night for nothing, especially when he just saw you the other day and everything was A-OK. No point in saying you've got another month to go and at this rate the obstetrician will be so fed up that by the time the real thing comes he'll play an extra set of tennis before meandering into the hospital. No; Sol listens and comforts, he looks at his watch and says, “Just to be sure, we'll see how long it takes between pains.” He manages to keep his eyes open for half an hour, and when all is quiet on the baby front and Cici's thinking she'd like some runny cheese and a cigarette, he says, “I'm okay if we don't make love. I want you to know I would never want you to do it just for me.” He's out of bed, in his bathrobe, ready to get her snack. “I mean it; I abstained before and I can abstain again.” She looks up at him and whispers something impossibly sexy. “Look what you do to me,” he says, “you're incorrigible.”

As Sol is looking for the runny cheese Cici likes, he trips against a leather bag that's parked next to the kitchen door. Goddamned handyman, leaving his stuff all over the place. Sol hired Gusmanov to check on the house and see if Cici needs anything because he (a) had pimples the size of boils on his neck and was no threat, and (b) spoke a little Italian he learned from his neighbors in Brooklyn. Sol worked such long hours, he didn't like leaving Cici alone all day in a new house in a new neighborhood. Cici was still nervous about driving so he'd also recently hired a housekeeper to clean and run errands.

When Sol goes back upstairs, Cici is sleeping. The moon shines through the still-curtainless windows, bathing Cici in a faint glow. He has made a hobby of looking at his wife. Her naked body is ravishing, but something about seeing her fully dressed, reaching a hand up to screw in an earring or fasten the clasp on her necklace, is magical. As she lifts her hair to pin it up or adjust her jewelry, he can see the mole behind her left ear and it startles him, as if he's discovering it for the first time. There's an equal thrill when she unpins her hair and it swans down her back. Hair that Sol loves to feel the weight of when wet. Her honey licks of hair spill over her pillow and onto the sheet. Her face is dewy from the moonlight or pregnancy or, Sol would like to believe, because of him. How did a thirty-two-year-old redheaded radiologist whose best features are his calves and his mind, not necessarily in that order, get a twenty-one-year-old shiksa goddess? Looking at Cici ripe with his child, well, could life possibly get any better?

The next morning, Sol gets up early and decides to surprise his wife with coffee in bed.
My wife.
He loves to say that—
I'll just go call my wife; sorry I can't cover your shift, the missus is waiting for me.
While the espresso percolates, Sol peruses the newspaper, folding each section in half lengthwise and then again crosswise. His long, tapered hands are spotted with freckles even though he's barely been in the sun all summer. Between the move, Cici, and his radiology caseload at the hospital, he hasn't been able to play much tennis. He hastily butters a roll, eats it in a few bites. This gives the pot enough time to bubble over, making a gritty mess Sol decides is best left to the new housekeeper, whose name he thinks is Coffee. Who names a child Coffee?

When he returns to their bedroom, Cici is bent over next to her open closet. She's making a series of exasperated
Oooooff
s, followed by a bout of cursing. Sol pulls the espresso cup from behind his back. “For the missus.”

“Do you know my bag, is big like this?”

“The one by the kitchen door that I almost killed myself tripping over last night?”

“Ah, I forget! I put it there so it is ready to go.”

“Where exactly is it going?”

“
Buuuu,
to the hospital, you silly.”

“They say first babies are usually late so don't get your hopes too high.”

“No say that, Solomon.” The corners of her mouth start to droop
and he remembers he's got another surprise. At the last minute he'd gone into the yard to forage for flowers; he proffers a few lilac sprigs that he's been hiding behind his back.

“You find one that is still alive? In the heat? Oh,
caro mio.
” Cici clasps the flower to her chest and her face brightens. He hopes it will always be this easy to make her happy.

By the time Cici's plopped down on the sofa, she's on her third espresso, second croissant, and fifth cigarette, which she stamps out in a saucer. She traces the back of her fingernail over a silk pillow, feeling its cool surface—a habit she's had since she was a baby—and goes to lick the jam off her last half a croissant. She lets the clumps dissolve on her tongue, enjoying how it sweetens the tobacco aftertaste. The living room is empty except for the sofa she's on, but she doesn't mind. She was brought up to believe that quality is far more important than quantity, be it in a woman's essentials—handbags and shoes—or home furnishings. The house is still so new and it takes time to find antiques, the right colors for fabric, paint.

In a minute her legs hurt and she's perspiring underneath her breasts. Maybe she should have a bath or ask the housekeeper to drive her into town. What would she do in town? Go to the market, where she'll have to deal with American money—it's so ugly and only one color—and feel bad when she forgets the words
toilet paper
? If the housekeeper goes with her, then she'll have to talk to her and it's tiring to translate in her head. Cici can't get a command of English; its irregular verbs and genderless nouns have their way with her. American names are strange. Like the housekeeper: “Ah,
come biscotti,
” Cici said when Solomon introduced them. “No, ma'am. Not like
biscuit,
that's with a
B
. It's
C
. It's
Cook,
like stirring the pot, making you food.
Cook,
add the
e,
” Cookie said loudly and slowly. Cici hated when people spoke to her like she was a deaf child. And Cook and the
e
had a dialect she couldn't understand, like the
stronzo sicilianos
.

Cici has yet to dream in English, which Solomon says is the sign that you really know another language. These days she just wants to read the Italian magazines they get in Little Italy, keep up with the gossip about this prince and that princess. She hasn't been in America long enough to understand their royalty, except of course that Marilyn Monroe had taken too many sleeping pills and died. Sol won't let her walk around in the city by herself now she's so far along so she'll have to ask him to bring some home. “Speak to Gusmanov, he knows Italian,” Solomon said. Her husband was so sweet. He thought that because Gusmanov grew up with Italians he knew how to speak the language. Although he tried, he butchered it with his Russian accent and it made Cici's ears hurt. She doesn't even think Gusmanov is coming today. It's too hot and she's too fat and
buuuuuuu, no lo so
.

Cook and the
e
must be cleaning the toilet because Cici hears the water going on and off, on and off. It's too quiet. She'd wanted this house because the grounds were big and filled with fragrant lilac trees. She'd pictured their children playing and running in and out of the house all day. She likes a noisy house. It's how she remembers life with her real papa; something always bubbling on the stove, fighting but also music—Papa's piano, Mama's opera on the Victrola, the ocean in the background. The complete opposite of her stepfather's house with its dark, shuttered windows, everyone speaking in lowered voices because Mama was sick again and couldn't be disturbed.

Cici shuffles through a stack of papers on the counter; all bills go to Sol. Sol is good with money. Her mother taught her that it is déclassé to discuss how much money one does or does not have. She claimed to be a descendant of the Borgheses but neglected to tell her children why they moved like ants up and down the Liguria coast to stay one step ahead of the debt collector or why Papa spent his weekends betting on horses instead of riding them. Why she had to marry a devout, humorless man after Papa died, a man they all knew she couldn't have loved.

Beneath the bills, Cici finds pamphlets from St. Clare's about the sacrament of baptism and the naming ceremony. There were only two Roman Catholic churches in Montclair, and Sol had left the decision up to her. Cici thought St. Clare's was fine for their immediate purpose; while not marble, the baptismal font was clean and simple. Father Padua seemed kind and—best of all—young.

Cici had had her fill of decrepit priests in Varese's Chiesa Brunella. Just thinking about it evokes the smell of Father Dante's onion breath seeping through the confessional grate. How she'd walk to church chaperoned by humpbacked old signoras who would stop at the bar for a shot of espresso chased by grappa and appear an inch taller going into Mass. The only thing Cici liked about Catholic school was the lives of the saints, because it included women and featured stigmata. Her favorite saint was Teresa of Ávila. People loved Teresa of Ávila so much that when she died, they stole her body parts. Sister Agatha said she knew someone who knew someone whose great-great-grandmother had touched Saint Teresa's finger. Cici loved Saint Teresa because of the ecstasy of her visions and imagined that's what sexual intercourse felt like. If it was a sin to have sex with a boy for pleasure, then why wasn't it a sin to give yourself to Christ? Teresa of Ávila's rapture certainly seemed to give her pleasure. Cici had these kinds of thoughts often and was certain something was wrong with her because of it. But she couldn't help herself. When she was alone at night she'd remember the words of Teresa of Ávila and imagine Maurizio the altar boy's lips pressed against hers.

Besides Maurizio the altar boy, the other good thing about church was how it smelled: a distilled concoction of old wood, bitter oranges, Christmas pine, death-sweet lilies, rotting beams, and bergamot smoke children thought was the Holy Spirit fogging out from the priest's censers. St. Clare's had no odor. Maybe it wasn't old enough to have acquired its own fragrance, but Cici made sure that Father Padua would use scented oil for the baby's baptism, and she hoped to convince him to bring out the censers.

Cici was in no rush to go to Mass at St. Clare's. She was finally free from the irons of family obligation. An obligation that came as part of the bargain her mother made by marrying Marco D'Ameri and promising him that she'd raise her daughters as good Roman Catholics. What would they think of her now? It's what Sol thinks that's important. He adores her and will adore his son. Ever since Cici looked down and couldn't see her feet over her stomach, she knew she was having a boy. Her older sister Genny had three children, all girls, much to Marco D'Ameri's disappointment.

Cici hasn't felt the baby kick or move since the cramp last night, and she is as listless now as she was excited when Sol helped her off the plane and onto the tarmac at Idlewild airport ten months ago. She'd spent much of her life in the provincial town of Varese, and although she'd worked at her stepfather's retail store in Milano, no city she'd seen in Italy compared to Manhattan. New York City was the big sister she'd always wanted: it moved fast, burned bright, took her by the hand and threw her into the action. She was used to the cold uniformity of Milano, the gray faces of businessmen, the small weariness of the housewives who spent all day shopping to feed the businessmen, putt-putting through the narrow streets in their itsy-bitsy cars. Everything in New York was big: big taxis, big hot dogs in big buns, big buildings, and big music. She was like a Russian doll, and Cici loved to explore the smaller and smaller cities nestled within. Sol took Cici to Little Italy, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side. Cici vowed to become a New Yorker right away.
Go, New York!
became her bible, and she devoured any and all guidebooks she could find in Italian. She learned how to take public transit and read the grid system, discovered that museum headsets were more fun than Berlitz tapes and that Harlem wasn't a place for the many wives of Turkish men. Most important, she figured out where to shop.