I sat on the top landing by some storage rooms and listened to their stereos. Neil Young. Jackson Browne. Two hours of pissing and moaning: “Oh, Lonesome Me.” One by one, the rooms shut down under me; I could feel it. It was three, four o’clock. The security guy, probably a hundred and four, went by in his little cart. I wanted a disguise that was an insult. I punched two holes in a grocery bag and tore a smiley face in it. I tied it around my neck with my tie. I went down the fire escape.
I stood at her bed and waited for her to roll over, that’s how sound a sleeper she was. When she was on her back I put my hand on her mouth and she woke up. She understood not to scream. She got out of bed and squatted in a corner of the room. This all took a very short time. She was still holding the edge of her quilt. She dragged it all across the floor. She didn’t even look eighteen, with the light from the window. I didn’t rape her. I made her take me in her mouth.
JOANIE
We used to get assigned saints and martyrs to read and think about for a week, and the girls always got assigned girls who were martyred because they refused to do something impure. The stories were never clear on what. Usually the Romans were involved. The most they’d tell you was that so-and-so wanted to ravish her. I imagined a woman lying back on a sofa with her arms behind her head. After that I drew a blank. They were always clear as to what happened after she refused. We weren’t sure what the Romans wanted in the first place, but we were real clear on what happened when you didn’t give it to them.
The stories always ended the same way: the guys doing the terrible things and killing were amazed to see, as St. Whoever checked out, that her expression was so calm. Sometimes she blessed them. Sometimes they’d convert right there. I liked to think about them feeling bad afterward. Those girls were heroes, the stories would end up, because their spirit had conquered their flesh. But it always seemed to us they were heroes because their spirit had conquered the guys’ flesh. You heard only that the girls had had something they had to overcome.
When Bruno dropped me off and I came into the kitchen, Todd was still in his chair, like he hadn’t moved in six hours. I asked him what he was still doing up, and he said, “Nina called. I told her where you were.”
He went to bed while I was brushing my teeth. Standing there at the sink, I said, “You gonna say good night?” And he said, “Good night.”
It was hot, and I lay there in bed and tented the covers. The catechism always talked about duels between the spirit and the flesh — bad news for me, because one I knew was strong; the other I wasn’t so sure about.
We always thought: something out there was so bad it was better to have boiling oil poured down your throat. It was better to have your hands cut off and fed to dogs in front of you. What was it? We were dying to know.
They told us about sins of the flesh way before they told us about sex. Sins of the flesh were almost irresistible, and that was the end of the subject. You couldn’t think of a better way to keep our attention on something. It wasn’t all our fault. It was all sexy, all of it. Grace, sin, martyrs, everything. Protestants didn’t get that: they had a cross with nobody on it.
But it made us independent. All this talk about guys and how out of control they were and what you had to protect: at least it meant we weren’t on the bottom.
It gave us some distance. To this day, sometimes I think the hardest part about sex is keeping a straight face.
There are a lot of good things you get out of being Catholic. It’s just the hard way to get them.
Back then, we were thinking, Suppose the Romans came for us? The thought crossing your mind: that wasn’t a mortal sin. That was the devil tempting you. You were supposed to fight it. The trick was how long it had to be in your mind before it was a mortal sin: Five seconds? Thirty seconds? Two minutes? Then we thought, Was worrying about it the same as thinking about it?
Mortal sin sent you to Hell forever and venial sins sent you to Purgatory. There weren’t too many venial sins on sex. They tended to go to mortal right away. So we’d lie in bed or, worse, kneel there in church and think those thoughts, and remember that not only did mortal sins send us to Hell; they also pounded nails into Christ’s body. You saw a lot of girls looking up at the crucifix, ashamed.
I was up all night the night Bruno dropped me off. I ended up sitting at the living-room window.
When they talked about sex and the devil tempting us, what they never figured out, or maybe they did, was that we weren’t worried about the devil; we were worried about ourselves. I always imagined God facing me after I died, and going, Don’t try and blame this on the devil. You were the one who wanted to think about it, weren’t you?
NINA
Thirty-three years she’s been around men, she hasn’t come close to figuring them out yet. Not close. She married one of them when someone with the brains of a squirrel coulda seen he was a washout first time he walked into the house. Stood around in his little bicycle-racing outfit, mad at her because she was gonna make him late. He sold commercial time for TV, so he was supposed to be a big shot. With me it was like, Mrs. Mucherino, how are you? How’s the family? Like that was the way you got around Italians, you talked about their family. He was snapping at her even then. She said, “Ma, he’s under a lot of pressure.” Who’s not under pressure? She said, “Ma, he feels bad about it, too.” So what? How many years, he was mad at the way he treated her, he took it out on her?
So she gets hurt. She won’t do nothing about it; she won’t try and force the stugazz to help support his own kid. So at least he’s gone, right? How much trouble can she get into, then? Few months later, she’s running around with Mr. Bacigalupe himself. What am I supposed to say to her? How stupid can you be?
You talk; they don’t listen. I talked till I was blue in the face about the cavone she went with after high school, Lawrence. Next to him, Bruno looked good. Dirty, with the long hair and who knew what else, no job, no ambition, what a mouth he had on him. I heard twice from Lucia that he was telling the neighborhood what Joanie would and wouldn’t do. I told her: he’s not coming around this house anymore. You’re gonna go off and meet him under a bridge somewhere or in the park I can’t stop you, but he’s not coming here. Ooo, that guy. I hated him so much I hated the saint he was named after. I heard after they broke up that Bruno beat him up so bad he put him in the hospital. I know this: I ran into him a month later, he had his fingers in a splint; he wanted nothing to do with me.
I warned her a thousand times about Bruno. She knows him better than I do. And I sit there and talk and it’s like talking to the wall. Her eyes are out the window, on the dog, everywhere but me. I tell her, Joanie, I’m only looking out for you. I’m not telling you this for my benefit.
It’s like she thinks that what’s behind her is gone, so she can either choose this or get nothing.
I asked Sandro to talk to her. He’s her father, he should talk to her. I wait for him to think of it, I’ll be ninety-nine years old.
He thinks I worry too much. Whatever it is, I worry too much. He still thinks the other one is coming back.
I told him: Civil War songs are coming back. Soupy Sales is coming back. Your mother, God rest her soul, is coming back.
That was the end of that discussion.
The first one, as far as I was concerned, was the kind of nightmare with no surprises. You marry Gary, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Bruno I didn’t even want to think about.