To this Daisy unhooked her bath sheet and wrapped it around my waist, then turned to the Lipschers and guests in all her foxy loveliness and gave them the finger. If I remember right, Theresa did the same, Jack and.1 grinning idiotically as we trailed our women inside the house.
But in truth, I'm afraid, it didn't quite end up as nicely as all, that, young family Battle triumphant in solidarity, chuckling over the charred cabinetry and the toasty scent of burnt pasta.
"Clean this up," I said to Daisy, my voice nothing but a cold instrument. "We'll talk tomorrow."
The next day I instituted what Pop had suggested, basically placing Daisy under house arrest for the week (no car keys, no credit cards, $20 cash), and promising her that I'd never speak to her again unless she sent back all the samples and swatches and kept the house in an acceptable state and made proper meals for the kids and checked with me from that point on before she bought anything — I mean anything other than stapies like milk and bread or underwear or school supplies. Back in those days I could actually titter such a thing, threaten someone like that, even a loved one, and I have to say that I regularly did. I naturally got into the habit at Battle Brothers, hollering at the fellas all day and lecturing my subcontractors and sometimes even talking tough to my customers, if they became too clingy or whiny or just plain pains in the ass, which at some point in every job they all did. But maybe it wasn't so much the habit itself as it was its effectiveness that I kept returning to, how reliably I could get all sorts of people to move it or jump or shut the hell up. People say that Pm like Pop that way, that I'll get this expression on my face, this certain horrific look, like whatever you're saying or doing is the most sickening turn, this instant disease, and that for you not to desist seems purely con-temptible, a veritable crime against humanity. And then I'll say what I want to have happen, what I want done, as I did that day to Daisy. She could hardly look at me as she sat on the edge of the tub as I shaved, her straight hair screening her face like those beaded curtains we all used to have, her palms pressed down against the porcelain, her elbows locked. I repeated myself and left for work and didn't call all day and when I got back (a little early, for I had the horrible thought that the house might be burning down) the whole place was peerlessly clean and quiet and the kids were in the den playing (Jack) and reading (Theresa) and there was a tuna casserole bubbling away in the oven, four place settings sparkling and ready on the kitchen table. The only thing missing was Daisy. I asked the kids where she was and they didn't know. I looked out back and in the street. Then I went into our bedroom to change, which was empty but trimmed out and neat, and when I walked into the bathroom, there Daisy was, still dressed in her pink robe with the baby blue piping, sitting on the edge of the tub exactly as she had been eight hours earlier, as if she'd been cast right into the cool porcelain.
"I fixed the house," she said, her voice husky, dried-out.
"Yeah," I said, just like I might to the guys, as though it was simply what I expected. It's always best, when you're trying to get things done, to utter the absolute minimum. You made it rain? Okay. You moved Heaven and Earth? Fine. This, too, was part of my general studies education a la Pop; he's the one who showed me how effective it can be to say grindingly little at the very moments you ought to say a lot, when you could easily be sappy and effusive and overgenerous with praise or forgiveness, when you could tender all you had and no one would ask for anything extra in return.
I know. I know about this. I do.
So when Daisy went on to say, "The other stuff, too. I got rid of it all. I did what you want, Jerry," what did I say back but simply, "Right," with a slight tip of the noggin, with a tough-guy grunt, which you'd think would be just what Daisy had had to deal with all her inscrutable Oriental/Asian life, and probably had, and was part of the reason she'd ended up with someone like me, some average American Guido she'd figure would have more than plenty to say, entreating every second with his hands and his hips and with his heart blithering on his sleeve.
Daisy didn't say anything and neither did I and for a moment our normally cramped en suite bath got very large in feeling, the only sound coming from the running toilet tank, this wasteful ever-wash I've always meant to fix but never actually have, even to this day. Daisy got up then and brushed past me and I could hear her walk out of our bedroom and down the hallway to the kitchen. I showered and changed and when I got to the table the kids were already eating their dinner, as usual furiously wolfing their food like a pair of street urchins who'd stolen into a cake shop. Daisy was making up my plate. As little kids, Jack and Theresa were forever hungry, a trait only parents must know to be peerlessly endearing, and the only time I can remember them not eating was after Daisy was buried and we had a gathering at the house, the two of them sitting glumly on the sofa, a plate of cold shrimp and capicola balanced between them on their legs.
Daisy set down my dinner and she sat, too, but wasn't eating.
After serving all of us seconds she took our plates and began cleaning up. The kids chattered back and forth but Daisy and I didn't say a word to each other. In the morning, breakfast was the same, and it was like that for the rest of that week and the next. Finally I got tired of the whole thing and when he asked I told Pop his method was fine save for the rageful misery and silences. He told me to keep it in my pants a bit longer, that I'd break her and also break myself of "the need to please her all the time," and that he and Nonna would stop by on Saturday to run interference. I asked him to just come over and play with the kids, so I could patch things up with Daisy, maybe take a drive to Robert Moses and sit on the grassy dunes and tell/beg her that I wished for our life to be normal again, though in truth their visit would mean that Nonna would take the kids out to the playground or to a matinee and then somehow cobble together a gut-busting dinner of meatballs and sausages and pasta and a roast, with Pop haranguing me about the state of our business and then inevitably bringing up Bobby, which he did anytime we spent more than an hour together.
When my folks arrived Daisy was still in the bedroom getting dressed. No matter her state of mind or what was going on she always pulled herself together for them, and particularly for Pop.
She'd wear her newest outfits and full evening makeup and jewelry and maybe she'd tie a little rolled silk scarf around her neck, which gave her a fetchingly game barmaid look. Pop of course lapped it up. He loved how she made silly mistakes with her English and always laughed at his jokes and patiently listened to all his stories and theories and opinions about the brutality of man and falsity of religion and the conspiring forces of a New World Order that would enslave all good men in a randy socialist vise-grip of eco-feminism and bisexuality and miscegenation (not withstanding my and Daisy's lovely offspring). Daisy, I really have to say, always kissed his ass, and I don't really know why, as there was never anyone else but Pop who could elicit that kind of humoring and attention from her, no one I'm sure except for Bobby Battle, M.I.A. (the best degree, for Immortality), whom she met a couple of times only but I know would have loved.