I verbalize a little seething, and when none of the aliens take notice, I dent the prefab wall with my fist. “Hey,” I yell. “I need a room for the night. Don’t any of you dummies speak American?”
Now she swings toward me apologetically. She has a braid that snakes all the way down to her knees. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” she says. She rinses gravy off her hands. “It’s our biggest family reunion to date. That’s why things are so hectic.” She says something about a brother getting married, leaving them short at the desk. I think of Jonda and the turbaned guy. He fired her when some new turbaned guy showed up.
“Let’s just go,” I say. “I don’t give a damn about reunions.” I don’t know where Jonda ended up. The Goldilocks doll wasn’t delivered to Laguna Vista Estates, though I had a welcome planned for it.
This kid’s got a ripe body. I follow the ripe body up a flight of outdoor stairs. Lizards scurry, big waterbugs drag across the landings.
“This is it,” she says. She checks the air conditioning and the TV. She makes sure there are towels in the bathroom. If she feels a little uneasy being in a motel room with a guy like me who’s dusty and scruffy and who kills for a living, she doesn’t show it. Not till she looks back at the door and realizes I’m not carrying any bags.
She’s a pro. “You’ll have to pay in cash now,” she says. “I’ll make out a receipt.”
“What if I were to pull out a knife instead,” I joke. I turn slightly away from her and count the balance of Haysoos’s bills. Not enough in there, after the shakedown. The fifty stays put, my new nest egg. “Where were you born, honey? Bombay? I been to Bombay.”
“New Jersey,” she says. “You can pay half tonight, and the rest before you check out tomorrow. I am not unreasonable.”
“I’ll just bet you’re not. Neither am I. But who says I’m leaving tomorrow. You got some sort of policy?”
That’s when I catch the look on her face. Disgust, isn’t that what it is? Distaste for the likes of me.
“You can discuss that with my father and uncle tomorrow morning.” She sashays just out of my reach. She’s aiming to race back to the motel room not much different than this except that it’s jammed with family.
I pounce on Alice before she can drop down below, and take America with her. The hardware comes in handy, especially the kris. Alice lays hot fingers on my eyes and nose, but it’s no use and once she knows it, Alice submits.
I choose me the car with the Land of Lincoln plates. I make a double switch with Broward County. I drive the old Tamiami Trail across the remains of the Everglades. Used to be no cars, a narrow ridge of two-lane concrete with swamps on either side, gators sunning themselves by day, splattered by night. Black snakes and mocassins every few hundred yards. Clouds of mosquitoes.
This is what I’ve become. I want to squeeze this state dry and swallow it whole.
ORBITING
ON Thanksgiving morning I’m still in my nightgown thinking of Vic when Dad raps on my apartment door. Who’s he rolling joints for, who’s he initiating now into the wonders of his inner space? What got me on Vic is remembering last Thanksgiving and his famous cranberry sauce with Grand Marnier, which Dad had interpreted as a sign of permanence in my life. A man who cooks like Vic is ready for other commitments. Dad cannot imagine cooking as self-expression. You cook for someone. Vic’s sauce was a sign of his permanent isolation, if you really want to know.
Dad’s come to drop off the turkey. It’s a seventeen-pounder. Mr. Vitelli knows to reserve a biggish one for us every Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this November what with Danny in the Marines, Uncle Carmine having to be very careful after the bypass, and Vic taking off for outer space as well, we might as well have made do with one of those turkey rolls you pick out of the freezer. And in other years, Mr. Vitelli would not have given us a frozen bird. We were proud of that, our birds were fresh killed. I don’t bring this up to Dad.
“Your mama took care of the thawing,” Dad says. “She said you wouldn’t have room in your Frigidaire.”
“You mean Mom said Rindy shouldn’t be living in a dump, right?” Mom has the simple, immigrant faith that children should do better than their parents, and her definition of better is comfortingly rigid. Fair enough — I believed it, too. But the fact is all I can afford is this third-floor studio with an art deco shower. The fridge fits under the kitchenette counter. The room has potential. I’m content with that. And I like my job even though it’s selling, not designing, jewelry made out of seashells and semiprecious stones out of a boutique in Bellevue Plaza.
Dad shrugs. “You’re an adult, Renata.” He doesn’t try to lower himself into one of my two deck chairs. He was a minor league catcher for a while and his knees went. The fake zebra-skin cushions piled as seats on the rug are out of the question for him. My futon bed folds up into a sofa, but the satin sheets are still lasciviously tangled. My father stands in a slat of sunlight, trying not to look embarrassed.
“Dad, I’d have come to the house and picked it up. You didn’t have to make the extra trip out from Verona.” A sixty-five-year-old man in wingtips and a Borsalino hugging a wet, heavy bird is so poignant I have to laugh.
“You wouldn’t have gotten out of bed until noon, Renata.” But Dad smiles. I know what he’s saying. He’s saying he’s retired and he should be able to stay in bed till noon if he wants to, but he can’t and he’d rather drive twenty miles with a soggy bird than read the Ledger one more time.
Grumbling and scolding are how we deMarcos express love. It’s the North Italian way, Dad used to tell Cindi, Danny, and me when we were kids. Sicilians and Calabrians are emotional; we’re contained. Actually, he’s contained, the way Vic was contained for the most part. Mom’s a Calabrian and she was born and raised there. Dad’s very American, so Italy’s a safe source of pride for him. I once figured it out: his father, Arturo deMarco, was a fifteen-week-old fetus when his mother planted her feet on Ellis Island. Dad, a proud son of North Italy, had one big adventure in his life, besides fighting in the Pacific, and that was marrying a Calabrian peasant. He made it sound as though Mom was a Korean or something, and their marriage was a kind of taming of the West, and that everything about her could be explained as a cultural deficiency. Actually, Vic could talk beautifully about his feelings. He’d brew espresso, pour it into tiny blue pottery cups and analyze our relationship. I should have listened. I mean really listened. I thought he was talking about us, but I know now he was only talking incessantly about himself. I put too much faith in mail-order nightgowns and bras.
“Your mama wanted me out of the house,” Dad goes on. “She didn’t used to be like this, Renata.”
Renata and Carla are what we were christened. We changed to Rindy and Cindi in junior high. Danny didn’t have to make such leaps, unless you count dropping out of Montclair State and joining the Marines. He was always Danny, or Junior.
I lug the turkey to the kitchen sink where it can drip away at a crazy angle until I have time to deal with it.
“Your mama must have told you girls I’ve been acting funny since I retired.”
“No, Dad, she hasn’t said anything about you acting funny.” What she has said is do we think she ought to call Doc Brunetti and have a chat about Dad? Dad wouldn’t have to know. He and Doc Brunetti are, or were, on the same church league bowling team. So is, or was, Vic’s dad, Vinny Riccio.