“I see all of that.”
“Yes, but this summer there’s something else. A kind of shadow. I can’t explain it.”
“Do you mean a dread?”
She looked at him sharply. “Yes — that’s exactly what I mean! What do you think is causing it?”
“Maybe it has to do with the quilt fire.”
“I think you’re right, Mr. O’Connor. I mean, Lewis. It must be the quilt fire. It was terrible, wasn’t it?”
The fire at the New Haven Quilt and Pad Company had indeed been terrible. Though the incident on nearby Franklin Street had happened months ago, Lewis knew it still haunted Wooster Square. Ten people had been trapped in a fire on the third floor. Rumor had it the automatic sprinkler system had been turned off and the fire doors ordered shut. These measures wouldn’t have surprised Lewis. Every factory in this part of town cut corners. Savings always trumped safety.
“I lost my favorite cousin in that fire,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you know anyone that worked there?”
“No.”
“Really? You’re the first person I’ve talked to in Wooster Square who’s said that.”
“I don’t know many people. I try to keep to myself.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of my policy of isolation,” he said, smiling at her wryly.
They had reached the green. She was right about the grass. And the elms weren’t faring much better. Those few that had survived the big hurricane in ’38 were beginning to look sick. He wondered if another wave of the tree disease was underway.
“I’d love to sit in the shade, but I don’t think there is any,” she observed.
They found a seat on a sun-soaked bench and looked around. A few young men sauntered by and one of them stole an appreciative glance at Cecilia’s shapely calves. Lewis knew he ought to feel protective, even territorial, but he didn’t.
“I love to watch people,” she said, oblivious to the attention. My sister and I try to figure out what they’re thinking. Where they’re going. What their lives are like.” She paused and turned to him searchingly. “Why do you prefer to be alone, Lewis? Is it because you’re shy?”
“I just don’t relate to most people.”
“Do you think you could relate to me?”
He studied her face. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick or rouge, not like her sister, who seemed to use a trowel to apply her cosmetics. Cecilia was a fresh-faced, lovely young woman. And that was the problem.
Suddenly she leaned in and tilted her head, just the way he’d asked her to do hours ago. She closed her eyes. Her lashes, thick and long, nearly rested on the ripe apples of her cheeks. He knew what she was waiting for.
“No,” he said.
“What?” Discombobulated, she opened her eyes.
“I don’t relate to you at all.”
He offered to walk her home, but she refused. She was too embarrassed. Mortified was the word she’d used. Lewis felt bad. He knew he’d handled things poorly. He should have been more kind. He should have made a gentlemanly excuse. It wasn’t the girl’s fault, after all. Their outing had been an experiment. A failed experiment.
When he got home he soaked his feet in a bath. He looked at them side by side. The right foot was normal. The left was a disfigured, swollen, scarred clod of meat. It didn’t even have toes, just oddly shaped nubs. And the skin — it didn’t resemble regular skin. It was tough and rubbery and crosshatched with gleaming-pale connective tissue.
Even under the warm water, his bad foot throbbed. Sometimes it did this, especially when the weather was very hot or cold. He sighed, undressed, and slid his whole body into the water. Through the narrow basement windows, the aroma of a hundred dinners wafted in. It was getting late, he should have been hungry by now. But the walk had left a bad taste in his mouth.
He went to bed soon after, lying awake and listening to Victrolas, men singing opera, squealing children. The pain kept him up, as did the persistent feeling that he was a reject, abnormal, maybe even a monster.
It must have been two o’clock by the time he finally drifted to sleep. He awoke to a sharp rap on the front door. He sat up abruptly, thinking it was daybreak. He must be late for work. But when he opened his eyes, darkness still streamed through his windows.
More knocking.
His instincts told him that it was Cecilia. What did she want? An apology? A second chance?
“It’s me,” a voice called out.
“Mr. Russo?”
“Open up, Lewis.”
Hurriedly, he slipped on pants and opened the door. He was sure it was an emergency; Mrs. Russo must be ill. Maybe she needed to go to the hospital.
“What is it?” he asked worriedly.
But Mr. Russo didn’t appear distressed. He leaned his head against the doorframe, and then the whole of his weight. He smelled like a distillery.
“Someone said they saw you,” he mumbled in a gravelly voice. “You were with one of the Colavolpe girls.” He sounded irritated, but not angry. Lewis was worried that he would slump over and fall to the ground.
“We went for a walk,” he replied.
“Consorting with a model is not acceptable.”
Lewis rubbed his large, pale eyes. “I’m sorry — I lost my head. It won’t happen again.”
Mr. Russo rubbed his eyes too; they looked bleary and bloodshot. “I didn’t peg you for that type, Lewis.”
“What type do you mean, sir?”
“The type that would exploit an opportunity.”
“I didn’t do any such thing. We just went for a walk.”
“It has been my experience, Lewis, that men like yourself aren’t always forthcoming about the truth.”
Lewis was fully awake now, and cross. He resented Mr. Russo for showing up on his doorstep at this time of night, for causing him concern, for accusing him of something he hadn’t done. Lewis had thought that Mr. Russo had a better opinion of him. He’d always believed there was a trust between them, unspoken but implicit.
“I am being truthful,” he said.
Mr. Russo stared at Lewis, and as he stared, his expression softened. Tenderness, or something like it, replaced consternation. He reached out and brushed Lewis’s cheek with his fingertips.
“Men like us aren’t always forthcoming,” he whispered.
Lewis has no idea what to say. Mr. Russo had taken a step closer. His foot was practically across the threshold. Lewis saw that his tie was loose, the top buttons of his shirt undone. A tuft of curly black hair peeked out from the starchy opening. He looked like a different man.
Lewis breathed deeply. He hated the whiskey smell of Mr. Russo’s breath. He knew that odor all too well. It was his first olfactory memory — forever branded on his brain. He remembered his father bending over him, hands clenching his spindly arms like vises, the whites of his eyes pink like Mr. Russo’s. His father promised another thrashing with the belt. The thick brown one with the heavy metal buckle. The one Lewis feared more than anything in this world.
That memory of his father contrasted deeply with his early memories of his mother, which were visual and tactile. He recalled the scratchy straw-stuffed mattress they used to lie on. The way he would snuggle against her corpulent body, nestling deep into the warm, protective rolls of her flesh. He’d felt so safe there, as she read to him from their favorite book. She must have read it thirty times, but he never tired of listening to it.
And then one day everything ended. His father came home more drunk than usual, stumbling through the door, angry and jealous about something Lewis didn’t understand. He ranted, grabbed the book, and threw it into the fire. Lewis remembered being picked up roughly, and then dangled over a large pot of boiling water, his mother screaming “Stop!” and “No!” — but it was too late. His father dipped his foot into the pot. Lewis recoiled like a wild animal fending for its life — thrashing, biting, clawing. He remembered being dropped to the floor, his mother futilely beating his father with her fists. From the ground, his view somehow magnified, Lewis watched his father strike his mother’s face with the back of his hand. She toppled over, hitting her head on the sharp corner of the counter.