The wash hung, the two women entered the house. Mrs. Ciampi offered coffee, which Marlene accepted with an internal shudder. It would be instant, with water barely boiled. Marlene’s mother, unlike Marlene, had no interest in cuisine beyond assuring quantity, and had raised six children on canned and frozen, on Kraft dinners and Velveeta and Pepsi, unlike her own mother, who was a maestra assoluta of south Italian cuisine. Marlene thought about generations, about inheritance, about what she was doing here, really, as she sipped the weak and bitter cup.
“And how’s my doll?” asked Mrs. Ciampi, feigning innocence, comprehending perfectly, of course, that the one person they hadn’t discussed was the one most on Marlene’s mind. “What’s with Lucy?”
So it all came out, the rudeness, the disobedience, the sullen contempt. Mrs. Ciampi listened, gently encouraging, withholding comment. Marlene felt some of the misery lift and wondered how women her age who were estranged from their own mothers managed to raise children-who could they talk to? Books? Therapists? Not that Marlene considered Teresa Ciampi any great expert on child rearing: look how Marlene had turned out, after all, but she had the history, she’d been there, when the seeds were planted that-so Marlene believed in her deepest heart-were bearing in Lucy such unlikely fruit.
“Tell me,” Mrs. Ciampi said after her daughter had run down, “does she still go to church?”
“Oh, does she ever! I can’t get her out of there. She makes the Little Flower look like Lenny Bruce.”
Her mother shot her a look dense with meaning. Decoded: you and your wise mouth, I told you a million times, you mock the church, you’re going to get trouble and here it is.
Aloud, she said, “And you? Or you just drop her off?”
“I go, Ma. You know me. I punch the clock even if I don’t work the shift. What, you think it’s a punishment from God Lucy’s giving me grief?”
“No, she’s just taking after her mother.”
“Get out of here! I was a little angel compared to Lucy. I never opened my mouth.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I must have been in amnesia eighteen years, I wasn’t really here.”
“When? Give me one time!”
“One time? Oh, let’s see. . you were fourteen, because it was the summer your great-aunt Angela passed away, God rest her soul. I came home from shopping and you were in the kitchen leaned over the ironing board, ironing your hair like you used to do, the hair God gave you wasn’t good enough. You remember that?”
“I remember ironing my hair.”
Mrs. Ciampi raised her eyes. “Oh, thank you, Madonna, I’m not losing my mind. So I come in, I put my bags down, and I say, because it was a weekday, and you were working at Uncle Manny’s, why’re you doing that on a Tuesday, or whatever it was, you got work tomorrow, you’re not going out, and you don’t say anything, like a mule. So I ask you, where’re you going you’re ironing your hair. Still no answer. So I think, this is my house, my kitchen, and this little strega’s pretending I’m not there? So I yank the cord from the iron out of the wall.”
She paused for effect, nodding, took a sip of coffee, assured herself that she had Marlene’s full and fascinated attention, and resumed.
“You let out a yell like I never heard, and you called me a bad word, I won’t even say what it was, and then you threw the iron at me. At my head.”
“No!”
“Yes. You think I’m making this up? Look over there on the door post, on the left. See that mark? It’s painted two times since then, but you could still see it. That’s the mark. Then you ran out, we didn’t see you until God knows when at night. That was when you were climbing in and out up the drainpipe.”
“Oh, Jesus, you knew about the drainpipe?”
“Don’t swear. Yeah, I know you think my head’s full of lasagna, but I got eyes.”
“And you never said anything. Did you tell Pop about the drainpipe?”
Mrs. Ciampi sniffed disdainfully. “Are you joking? You’d be six feet underground I ever told him the things you pulled. I didn’t tell him about the iron either. He came home and saw the mark, I said I was changing the kitchen bulb and the ladder fell.”
“I can’t believe this,” said Marlene. She felt an odd constriction in her chest, and the room seemed to be growing warmer. “I don’t remember any of that. And you didn’t do anything about it?”
“I prayed, Marlene. I sent up so many novenas. . Father Martini, if you remember him, let him rest in peace, Father Martini said, ‘Teresa, you wore out the roof on the church. That’s why we need a new roof, Teresa Ciampi.’ What else could I do? Whip you like a dog? Lock you up?” She sighed, sipped the cooling coffee. “Anyway, it turned out better than I expected, tell you the honest truth. You stopped with those bums with the motorcycles, you won the scholarship to Sacred Heart. . I’m not saying you’re not still pazza, but it’s your life, darling. But what I’m saying, about Lucy, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Have patience and bring her by more, I’ll talk to her.”
Marlene nodded, hardly hearing. “I’m stunned, Ma. Now you’re going to tell me you were out of your skull when you were Lucy’s age, too.” Silence at this. “Well, were you?”
“That’s none of your business,” said Mrs. Ciampi, and looked away.
The object of this discussion, having calmed her fury just enough so that she was no longer shaking, dressed in her usual jeans, sneakers, and embroidered vest over a T-shirt, this one imprinted with a color rendition of a can of Chung-King Chicken Chow Mein, and fled the loft. On an ordinary summer vacation day she would have headed, of course, for the Asia Mall to hang out and help out, but this was, naturally, impossible, her mother having ruined her life forever. She had her musette bag stocked with her favorite books, her journal, pens, a compact dictionary or two, and something less than $200 in crumpled bills, her stash.
She walked in a northerly direction, up Crosby, over to Broadway on Spring, up Broadway, through the heart of cast-iron Soho. She almost headed for Old St. Patrick’s, where she might dump some part of her burden of pain, but decided against doing so until the wrath had left her heart. Father Dugan was a smart fellow, and he would snatch the secret from her in no time, as one could not lie to a priest, and she did not want to give it up just yet. She began playing with the idea of going to Washington Square Park and making a start as a junkie prostitute street person. Pro: it would focus the entire energy and attention of the family on Lucy, where it truly belonged, and would make her mother utterly miserable, which she deserved. Con: hideous pain and early death. Still, she had to do something. .
At Prince Street she became aware that someone was following her. In an instant the stupid adolescent maundering left her mind by the nearest exit. Her true self popped up out of the mire, looked around, and took charge.
Lucy paused, as she had learned to do, at a corner window and checked the reflection, and then turned east on Prince. Halfway down the block, she suddenly dashed across the street, as if attracted by the display in a gallery window opposite. She saw an oriental man in dark clothes and a cheap straw hat walk past on the north side of Prince and stop to examine some rugs on display in a window. He could see her reflection as she could see his. When Lucy moved west again, he followed, keeping to the opposite side of the street. Then, between one of her sideways glances and another, he vanished.