The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (51 page)

I went to Anne-Marie's last dancing class. When it was over, Mother told Miss LaMonte about our plans to move to California, and asked if she knew any good dance teachers out there so Anne-Marie could continue to prepare for discovery. Pushing a handkerchief down between her breasts to soak up perspiration, the glistening Miss LaMonte said that she didn't know any personally, but she assumed that we might find one or two adequate teachers, although we couldn't expect them to have the professional New York legitimate stage training that had made her studio what it was today. As Anne-Marie was putting her leotards into her carrying bag for the last time, Miss LaMonte's mother turned in her bentwood chair before the old upright piano, peeled the ubiquitous cigarette off her lower lip and, after a short but impressive bout of moist coughing, told Mother between reedy gasps that Anne-Marie would do just fine in California because she had plenty of moxie, and if there was one thing you needed to be a success out in California it was moxie.

One evening while Mother and Anne-Marie were planning the last details of the wedding, Ben and I took a walk around our neighborhood. As we threaded through the narrower back streets, he told me about some of the funny and frustrating things that had happened to him in the army, but nothing about combat or his wounds. When I asked about these, he either changed the subject or slipped into silence, but when I asked what war was like, he described it as months of discomfort and boredom broken by a few minutes of panic and rage, and if your panic and rage made you do certain things, you were called a hero, but if it made you do other things you were called a coward, and that's how it was. He said that from what he had seen, war was just one massive screw-up. The victors didn't really win, they just lost more slowly than their enemy, or had enough stockpiled materiel to go on losing longer. We were comfortable enough with each other to be able to walk in silence for longish periods, each browsing on his own thoughts. I wanted to tell him that I could see how much the war had changed him, and that he should do what he really wanted to do, and not feel obliged to marry my mother because of us kids. I selfishly yearned to hear him say that taking care of my mother was what he wanted more than anything in this world. I wanted to escape both responsibility for my mother's future happiness, and any guilt about Ben's future unhappiness. While I was trying to find the words to express this, he broke the silence to ask how I was getting along with my slide rule, and I confessed that I'd been slack about keeping in practice, like he told me I had to, but I had taught myself to read French... pretty much. The next thing I knew we were approaching our stoop, and I hadn't offered Ben an easy way out of any guilt he might harbor about wanting to leave Mother and us kids. I didn't then admit, even to myself, that I was glad I hadn't given him a chance to liberate himself, for fear he might take it.

The next day Ben withdrew his savings from the bank, and the four of us went down to the echoing, brake-squealing, gas-smelling Central Terminal and boarded a bus for Granville. Mother had strongly advised him to leave most of the money in the bank, but he said that he had never had that much folding money in his pocket before, and what's the point of having money if you can't get a kick out of it? But that explanation wasn't sufficient to keep Mother from returning to the matter and gnawing on it, as was her habit. She always believed that her advice was ignored only by those who hadn't quite understood it.? HYPERLINK “file:///C:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Administrator\\Impostazioni%20locali\\Temp\\Rar$EX00.266\\Trevanian%20-%20The%20Crazyladies%20of%20Pearl%20Street.htm” \l “note67#note67” ??[67]? During the long trip up to Granville we kids sat in the front seats just behind the driver because Mother thought that might assuage Anne-Marie's tendency to motion sickness.

It didn't, and this was before buses had on-board toilets, so the driver had to pull over three times to let her vomit by the side of the road while, to Anne-Marie's humiliation, the passengers looked on, their eyes flinching away then back again with that blend of revulsion and fascination people feel towards freshly squashed roadkill. Mother and Ben sat just behind us, and I heard her mention the excess cash Ben was carrying at least half a dozen times. His responses progressed from passing it off with lighthearted joshing, to a flat statement that he didn't want to talk about this any more, to prickly silence that I could feel through the dust-smelling velveteen seat after she said that flashing a big wad of money was nothing but acting like your typical hick.

I scrunched down in my seat and wished I had the power to render my mother mute for just a little while. I tried closing my eyes and focusing all my concentration on the task. It didn't work.

When the bus stopped on Granville's main street, we were met by a nervous, apologetic Aunt Lorna, who had come alone because she wanted a chance to tell Mother that Tonio had made some changes in the arrangements... just a few. Speaking quickly to explain everything before Mother could interrupt, Lorna began by saying she hoped Mother wouldn't get mad and blame her, because it wasn't her fault; she had so much wanted things to go just right, especially when her favorite cousin and best friend in this whole wide world would soon go away to California and God only knew when—or if—they'd ever meet again, and it would be a crying shame to let little things ruin what might be the last time they ever spent together, especially considering the bad blood there had been between them, not that she was blaming Mother for that, but...

“What is it, Lorna, for the love of Christ?”

Ben returned from getting our luggage from under the bus in time to hear Aunt Lorna explain in a whining, don't-blame-me tone that at the last minute Tonio had decided to invite his two brothers and their families for the weekend—to make a real family affair out of it, you see?—and he'd also invited a couple of business acquaintances who happened to be in town—but don't worry, Tonio didn't invite them to the wedding, just to the supper afterwards. Tonio hadn't seen his brothers in a coon's age, although they only lived down in Hudson Falls, and Lorna could hardly tell him he couldn't have any of his family visit when she was having her cousin and her children and—oh, and Ben of course. Hi, Ben, nice to see you! Remember me? I'm Lorna. So! Well, the sleeping arrangements might be a little crowded. Both of Tonio's brothers have kids.

“And the kids were invited to my wedding too?”

Lorna put a temper-soothing arm around Mother. “Oh, please, hon. Let's not have any trouble. Things will work out fine and dandy, if you'll just take it easy and not worry. I'll take care of everything. Anne-Marie, you're pale as a ghost. What's wrong, honey? Had a bad trip up? Puke in the bus, did you?”

Mother looked inquiringly at Ben, who puffed out a long sigh, then put his arm around her and pressed her to his side. “Don't worry, hon. I'm sure everything will be fine.”

With huge relief, Lorna kissed her cousin's cheek noisily and thanked her for understanding how things were, then she herded us all towards their car—no longer new, so she was allowed to drive it. When Ben said something about the car's 'X' sticker which allowed them almost unlimited gasoline, Lorna shrugged and said that Tonio's friends could arrange things like that. Ben's jaw tightened, but he refrained from comment.

At Lorna's house we were greeted by a screaming herd of children ranging from two years old to ten. Tonio was sitting on the porch with his brothers, two younger, fatter duplicates of himself, even down to the dark Calabrian stains beneath the eyes from generations of vitamin-B deficiency. He waved a curt greeting but didn't get up. We went into the house, wading through a tide of noisy, clutching kids, and met Lorna's sisters-in-law: over-worked, distracted women whose youth and spirit had not survived the third child, but they'd gone on to have five each. We were escorted upstairs to drop off our suitcases, and I discovered that although the house had six bedrooms the only way they could put us all up was to give a bedroom to each of the couples with the biggest for the newlyweds (wink, blush), which left one bedroom for all the boys and another for all the girls. Including Anne-Marie and me, there were seven girls and five boys, and when I asked how five of us could sleep in one double bed, Lorna said we would sleep crosswise. It'll be fun!

Anne-Marie and I exchanged glances. We doubted that.

The wedding was to be that evening, a simple ceremony before a Justice of the Peace with only Lorna there as matron of honor and Tonio as witness. There would be a wedding supper for all the family and the two guys from Troy that Tonio had invited. Aunt Lorna beckoned Mother into her bedroom to have a 'nice juicy gossip', and Anne-Marie and I drifted back downstairs where we found Ben, doing his best to play the social game. He declined a glass of wine and accepted lemonade instead, smiling half-heartedly at the single-entendre suggestion from one of Tonio's brothers that Ben was trying to keep his head clear so he didn't miss anything tonight. Right? Right? Am I right or not? Eh? Somebody tell me if I'm right or wrong here! Tonio's nieces and nephews ran shrieking through the house, crashing into me, trampling my toes and clutching me with sticky fingers, using me as a pivot point and a shield. Like most children brought up to show a well-behaved front to outsiders, Anne-Marie and I had nothing but contempt for kids who were rambunctious in public, and for their feckless parents.

I managed to hide from the mob up in the attic with a book until evening came and we all had to gather on the porch to wish the wedding party well as they drove off to the Justice of the Peace, but not before one of Tonio's brothers complimented Ben on his new blue suit, his blue and pink striped tie and his two-toned shoes, then he turned away and lightly tapped the side of his nose. I cannot recall how Mother looked, but I am sure that even after all these years Anne-Marie would be able to describe to the last detail her wedding suit, gloves and hat with a veil.

When the wedding party returned, dinner was served to the ravenous pack of kids in the steamy kitchen full of wonderfully complex smells. The women put up great writhing plates of spaghetti and meatballs with generous dollops of thick red sauce dusted with feathery ground cheese. The meatballs were made from a family recipe: beef and sausage ground together with bread crumbs that had been toasted with herbs, and each meatball had a bit of olive and a sliver of garlic buried in its center and was seared in smoking hot olive oil to seal it, then cooked in the sauce long enough for the bread crumbs to absorb its moisture and flavor. Ben was sitting with the men around the dining room table, six of them because Tonio's two 'business acquaintances' from Troy had arrived for the wedding feast. Following the traditions of Tonio's family, the men ate alone and were served first. Mother, as the bride and therefore, by rights, the star of the evening, resented having to eat out in the kitchen with the kids and women, and she was annoyed by the way Lorna kept jumping up to put her head into the dining room and ask the men if they wanted anything, then running to their service with bottles of wine, platters of sauce-drenched meatballs, and steaming bowls of spaghetti which she had fished from the cauldron that filled the kitchen with steam because it was kept on a rolling boil so that second and third helpings of pasta could be freshly cooked al dente. “Let them serve themselves, for Christ's sake,” my mother said. “Their legs aren't broken.”

Anne-Marie and I sat side by side so at least one ear wouldn't be permanently damaged by the kids, whose voices soared to a volume calculated to crack toilet bowls. Much of this cacophony was cheerful animal high spirits, but the joyful noise was punctuated by yelps from kids who had been pinched or kicked under the table; and by that nerve-flaying whine 'Ma-ma-a-a!' 'Ma-ma-a-a!' of spoiled kids who repeat their complaining mewls until the mother finally breaks off her gossiping, wheels on the offender and screams, 'What do you want! What? What? What?', which rebuff makes the brat yowl even harder. Beneath the manic din were undertones of soft whimpering from little kids who had spilled their milk or wet their pants, and those taunting sing-song chants of teasing that make the victim finally roar in venomous rage, all this mixed with the voices of the women at their table in the corner, talking louder and louder to be heard over the kids, and over one another, and every once in a while one of the women, driven to exasperation by a child tugging on her skirt and whining for attention while the mother tried to talk through and over the interruption, would suddenly snatch the offending kid by the collar or the hair and thrust her face into his and scream, 'Are you going to give me a minute's peace? Or do you want me to slap that face right off you?!' As the whimpering child pondered these options, guffaws and snorts came from the dining room where the men were exchanging blue stories. A kid experimented to see how far forward he could tip his baby sister's chair. The girl fell out, split her lip and set up a bellow out of all proportion to her pain, but sufficient to get her brother cuffed around the ears by his mother. “That's it! I've had it up to here! You want me to smash your head between two bricks?!” As she jumped up from the table to show her sisters-in-law that she was a firm disciplinarian and in no way responsible for the way her kids were behaving, this rattled mother upset a bowl of spaghetti sauce into Aunt Lorna's lap, so the boy got slapped for that, too.

In short, an extended family having fun.

Anne-Marie and I finished eating and tried to excuse ourselves so we could slip away, but Mother whispered harshly that it would be impolite to leave, and it wouldn't hurt us one little bit to stay and make friends with our cousins... cousins that we might never see again, as we would soon be out west. I guess it was this promise that gave us the strength to sit at the table for what seemed like a geological age, our faces frozen in sickly grins that were as close as we could come to smiles.