THE JET HIT the Sacramento runway on schedule and the passengers unhooked their safety belts. I was first to disembark as a gust of September heat blasted off the concrete runway, shimmering like an unfocused television screen. I had forgotten the heat of the Sacramento Valley. Now I knew I was home again.
My brother Mario was not at the reception gate, where a few people had gathered to meet the Los Angeles flight. I went inside the refrigerated depot and sat down to wait. After fifteen minutes I walked out into the parking area to look for Mario’s truck. There was no sign of Mario and the heat was crushing. I ducked inside the waiting room again, found the cool, dark bar, and ordered beer. By one-thirty I began to doubt that Mario would show up. I dialed his home in San Elmo and his wife Peggy answered. Her voice always had the breathless quality of a mother pursuing children.
“Who’d you say this was?”
“Henry Molise. Your brother-in-law.”
“Well, for God’s sake. Henry Molise! What brings you up here, Henry? Are you still writing those shitty novels? The last one made me vomit. I burned it so the children wouldn’t be contaminated. Lord, what a way to make a living!” (The novel concerned a young railroad brakeman who deserted his wife and children for a career in professional baseball. There was no way for Peggy to like it.)
“Is Mario there, Peggy?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“It’s your smart-ass brother,” I heard her call out. “Do you want to talk to him?”
There was a roar in the background, a sporting event of some kind on television. After a long time the volume of the crowd noises was reduced and Mario spoke.
“Hi, Henry. What’s up? You watching the game?”
“Game? What game? You were supposed to meet me at the airport.”
“Forget it. Don’t come up. I was going to call you. Everything’s okay. They made up. All that talk about a divorce—it didn’t mean a thing.”
“You jerk! Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I meant to, Henry. It slipped my mind.”
“Come and get me.”
“Get you? Where are you?”
“Sacramento airport.”
“You mean, you came up?”
“How the hell could I be at the Sacramento airport if I didn’t come up? I flew up, Mario! I’m here, in a phone booth, talking to you. Come and get me!”
He moaned.
“Can’t do it, Henry. It’s the Giants and the Dodgers. Bobby Murcer’s at bat with two on. For God’s sake, Henry, go someplace and find a television set! Hurry! The game’s just started!”
“You rat!”
“Sorry, Henry. Tell you what: there’s a bus to San Elmo at five. I’ll pick you up at the depot.”
I struggled for self-control.
“I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my life,” I told him. “But please. Do me a favor. Don’t tell Mama and Papa I’m coining. I don’t want them at the depot, waiting for me. I don’t want any part of that scene. Okay?”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Murcer struck out.”
I hung up and went back to my perch at the bar, depressed, frustrated. Mario was a born bungler. No wonder my father was always disgusted with him, always putting him down.
The voice over the public address system announced the next flight to Los Angeles. Suddenly I had a premonition of terrible problems in San Elmo and decided to fly back home. But as I hurried toward the embarkation gate my mind changed. I had come this far, so why not continue another eighteen miles and complete the journey? I owed it to my folks, if only for a few hours.
The airport bus took me into Sacramento, where I went to a movie, loafed around a bookstore, stopped in a bar for a beer and a few plays at the pinball game, and finally boarded a bus to San Elmo, altogether a most fruitful and rewarding day thanks to my wayward brother who had not only triggered the journey but had left me stranded at the end of it.
Coming into San Elmo down Main Street you could see that the town had changed, now that Highway 80 to the Sierras veered away from the city two miles north. San Elmo was isolated now, its lifeline cut, and the town was dying. Except for a few cars parked before the Safeway and Penney’s, the main stem was deserted. Acme Billiards, where much of my early education for life was acquired, was dosed down. So was the Ventura Theatre, where I saw every Elizabeth Taylor movie at least four times.
The bus turned right off Main Street, then left down the alley to the depot. I stepped down with two Chicanos and followed them inside the depot (formerly a clothing store), which had a few wooden benches fronting the windows looking out on Main Street. The ticket window was open but the depot was unattended. There were only two people in that desolate place. One was my mother, seated on a bench near the window, and the other was my father, seated on another bench as far away from her as possible.
Both saw me at the same time. My mother spoke first, crying out, “Henry, my boy!” and holding out her arms.
Though it was fearfully hot in the waning afternoon, she wore a heavy black coat with a fur-lined collar and hem. I knew that damned coat—we kids called it “the Colorado coat”—a hand-me-down from Aunt Carmelina thirty years ago, a flashy, almost whorish coat, absurdly draping my small, gray-haired mother. Beneath was a gingham housedress. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her hot face and smelled the scent of Italian spices always present in her hair.
“Thank God,” she breathed, clinging to me. “Oh, thank God! All I wanted was to see my dear son one last time.”
Her body twitched, then melted suddenly in my arms, her head thrown back, her mouth open, her eyes closed. She only weighed about a hundred and three pounds, but it was dead weight and hard to control, and I floundered with her, yelling at my father for help.
“Leave her go,” he scowled, a little black cigar in his mouth. “Leave her fall on the floor.”
But he crossed quickly to us, taking her like a sack of grain and hustling her to a bench, mumbling, “Son of a bitchen woman, why don’t somebody put her out of her misery?” Splotches of angry blood bloated his neck and smoke from the black cigar stung his eyes.
Mama lay spread out as if unconscious, eyes closed, mouth open, one hand primly tugging her dress below the knee. Her stockings were held up by sleeve garters. I recognized them: they were discards from the old man’s wardrobe.
“It’s nothin’,” Papa said. “Same old thing. Just nothin’.”
“Water,” Mama moaned.
I looked about for a water fountain.
“There ain’t any in here,” Papa said.
I ran out on Main Street and down four doors to the Colfax Café and asked the waitress for a glass of water. When I got back to the depot my mother was sitting up, her face thrown back as Papa bopped himself disgustedly at the side of his head. I put the paper cup to Mama’s lips and she sipped the water timidly, like a kitten. It revived her with remarkable swiftness. Quickly she smiled with alert brown eyes as she studied me.
“You don’t look well, Henry. Doesn’t she treat you good?”
“She treats me fine, just fine. You feeling better now?”
“It’s my heart, Henry. It won’t be long now. I’m ready to go any time. I’ve had a terrible life. He kicked me. He choked me. He’s like a wild animal now. You don’t know what I have to put up with. He’s strange, Henry. I’m afraid to go to bed at night.”
Papa slumped down on the bench and let his body grow limp, wearily shaking his head as he stared at the bare wooden floor. I glanced at him commiseratingly and our eyes met.
“You don’t know, kid,” he said. “You’ll never know the half of it.”
This brought a moan from my mother. I took her hot dry hand.
“You rest a while. I’ll call a taxi.”
She shook her head. “Taxi costs fifty cents.”
“Taxi went outa business two years ago,” Papa said.
“Call Stella,” I told him. “She’ll come in her car.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that woman. Let her walk.”
It was said quietly and truthfully, I was sure, but it was cruel nevertheless, for an old lady was entitled to her whims, especially my mother, who possessed little else. She struggled to get to her feet.
“I’ll try,” she said.
I put my arm around her. “I can’t,” she sighed, easing down on the bench again.
“She’s lying,” Papa said.
“Goddamn it! Call Stella!”
His face dropped in embarrassment. Blunt as he was to others, he could not bear it when anyone spoke harshly to him. His mustache was white now, his hair a brownish gray, like autumn leaves. He had the apple cheeks of the inveterate Chianti drinker and his brown eyes were cobwebbed with minute red veins. After a moment of brooding silence he crossed to the pay phone bolted to the wall, moving quickly but with a faint limp, as if pain pinched the soles of his feet. Though he still looked very strong, the patina of vitality was gone from his movements. He had lost weight and the seat of his khaki trousers drooped sadly.
He inserted a coin into the phone and began to dial, at the same time pronging his middle and index finger toward my mother, a peasant gesture of ill will.
Watching him, she whispered, “Can I tell you something, Henry?” I saw her eyes shining with cunning innocence.
“Yes?”
“Your father’s losing his mind.”
I said I didn’t think so, that he was the same.
“Stella don’t answer,” Papa said from the phone.
The coin returned and he began to dial again. Suddenly he was yelling, his mouth like a bulldog’s, snarling into the instrument, his fist shaking to emphasize his threats.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted. “I’ll break every bone in your body. I’m warning you, keep away!”
It was madness, total frenzy.
“You see?” my mother said, pleased.
Certainly it was no way to speak to his own daughter. I crossed to the phone and lifted the receiver from his hand.
“Hello, Stella.”
It wasn’t Stella at all. It was Mario. He and my father were having their usual scholarly discourse.
“Listen, Henry,” he implored. “Put a muzzle on that mad dog. All I said was, I can’t leave now. It’s the bottom of the seventh, Henry, and the Giants got two men on base. Oh God, man! Matthews is on second, Rader’s on third, and Murcer’s stepping into the batter’s box. Oh, sweet Jesus, it’s now or never! I can’t leave, Henry. I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
“You still watching the same rucking game?” I yelled.
“It’s fantastic! It’s the end of the world! Good-bye, Henry!” He hung up.
I turned to my father. He was lighting a cigar stub. He flipped the match in disgust. “My son Mario!” he grumbled; then he turned to Mama, “You ready to come home now, on your own two feet?”
“Let’s all go home,” she said cheerfully, scanning the barnlike room. “Where’s the water closet?” She saw the properly marked door and crossed to it without a trace of fatigue. Papa watched her enter. “Won’t be long now,” he reflected. “I give her a year at the most.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pressed a finger into his temple. “Her head. She’s crazy.”
“You’re both crazy.”
He flicked the remark aside as if dispersing a fly.
“Where’s your suitcase?”
“Didn’t bring any. I’m going back tonight.”
His red eyes seemed to catch fire. “No, you ain’t. You stay a while.”
“I can’t. Gotta work.”
“Work? You? What work?”
“My book.”
He snorted. “Book! You call that work?” He threw his cigar at a spittoon and missed. “Then, go. Get out of here. Take the next bus. And don’t come back.” He spun around and marched for the door. I ran after him.
“Wait. I’ll stay till tomorrow.”
I snatched at his arm, but he jerked it away and was gone, hurrying past the front window and down the street as Mama came out of the restroom. She got a flash of her husband hurrying across the street.
“What’s he mad at now?”
I told her.
“Did he say anything about the job?”
“Job?”
“He knows. Let him tell you.”
It sounded secretive, mysterious, conspiratorial, but she said no more as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. I squired her down the hot street to the intersection with the bank on the corner. She drew me toward the plate glass window and pointed to a desk, my brother Virgil’s desk, with a bronze nameplate upon it: VIRGIL T. MOLISE—LOANS. At that hour the bank was closed.
“Look how neat he is,” she said, pleased. “How clean he keeps his desk. Such a good boy.”
“He always was a neat kid,” I said. I almost added that he always was something of a prick too.
We crossed the street. She was perspiring and I made her take off the whorehouse coat. I slung it under my arm.
“I fixed you a nice dinner,” she said. “Baked eggplant with ricotta cheese, gnocchi di latta, and veal. Remember the eggplant? It’s your favorite.”
“You knew I was coming.”
“Mario phoned.”
Oh, that Mario!
She took small quick steps, staying close to the line of shops on the shady side of Lincoln Street. Very few people were about in the infernal heat. Even the lobby of the Hotel Ritz, where railroad men liked to loaf in leather chairs, was deserted. A sick town. One had the feeling that bulldozers lurked at the city limits, waiting for the death rattle.
“Make your father see the doctor,” she said. “At his age you never know.”
“He looks fine. Thinner, but that’s good.”
“Too much wine. Up and down all night to the water closet. I bought some nice mozzarella. Tomorrow I’ll fix some croquettes. Mario loves them.”
We crossed the railroad tracks to the other side of Atlantic Street, the oldest part of town, with rotting brick stores, a street of a few Chinese shops, a laundry, a restaurant, and a dry goods store. The Café Roma was the last place on the dead-end street.
“That’s where he is,” she said, looking toward it with a frown. “They have puttana upstairs.”
“Really?”
There were always prostitutes upstairs above the Café Roma. After high school I used to go up there all the time, and I loved it especially on rainy winter afternoons, playing the jukebox and playing gin rummy for tricks with the girls.
I was there one night when a great commotion rumbled on the staircase, and I heard my own father yelling as the madam and three hookers pushed him into the alley for being drunk and obnoxious and broke. I was ashamed of him that night, and when the madam asked if I knew the man, I said no, I don’t know the man, I never saw him before in my life; a crazy Dago, I said, they’re all over town, they’re all over town, and you could hear my father in the alley, yelling up at the window, “I’m going to the police! I’ll have you shut down!”
Yes, I knew a great deal about the Café Roma and the rooms upstairs. I could still see the bare mattresses in the cribs and smell the cold loveless rooms and remember the sad, broken, stupid women, for San Elmo was in a prostitution circuit that included Marysville, Yuba City and Lodi, and when the syndicate sent a prostie down to San Elmo she had to be a pig, not even fit to work Yuba City, which was surely the end of the world.
Looking toward the neon sign blinking CAFÉ ROMA above the saloon, my mother’s eyes heated with Christian righteousness. “Thank God you’re all married. It keeps you out of those places.”
I laughed and kissed her for this outrageous naiveté. “You go home now,” I said. “I’ll get Papa.”
“Don’t fight.”
“No fighting.”
“Tomorrow I’ll make you a nice fritto misto with scampi and cauliflower.”
“Beautiful.”
“You still like new cabbage?”
“Love it.”
“We’ll see. Maybe day after tomorrow. And Sunday, ravioli.” She was working it out in her mind, delicious little schemes to keep me there. I watched her mincing away on fast small feet, carrying her fur-trimmed coat.