If on Friday there had been any unity among them, on Saturday, by contrast, each of the seven went his own way. More or less. Reb had wanted to sleep late so as to be fresh when he picked up Rosalind. But he woke early, lingered over a large breakfast, and drove alone into town to buy the lobsters and clams they ate for lunch. The others all wanted to get up early and instead slept late. Alex had wanted to lie on the beach and look over the girls. He slept until eleven, rose to find the house empty, and went for a long walk, barefoot, along the sea wall. When he got back the tops of his feet were painfully burned. He spent the afternoon drinking in the cool shade of the screened porch. Wiggy and Lee had wanted to go swimming, Chub and Vinnie to go for a boat ride in the harbor. Wiggy and Lee went for the ride, Chub and Vinnie ended up on the beach, where they got their legs scorched pink. Sal, having expressed no opinions or strong desires, had said he would wait for Wiggy and Lee and have a few beers in town. Instead he ran into Reb outside the fish market and they had a couple of ice cold Buds before returning to the cottage to start cooking.
By lunchtime there were eight of them. Dom drove up in his car just as a cloud of steam was rising over the kitchen sink and a pot of lobsters was being drained. ‘Be-eautiful,’ he said, standing in the doorway with a huge grin on his face. ‘Shut the screen,’ were their words of welcome, ‘you’re letting in the bugs.’
‘Look at this,’ Lee had said, ‘Dom brought a sixpack.’
‘Two sixpacks,’ Dom corrected.
‘How about that,’ Vinnie said, ‘the guy brings beer just for himself.’
‘Whatsa matter, Dom,’ Reb said, ‘the old lady hold back your allowance?’ But he was glad Dom had come and told him so as he shoved a whopping VO and water into Dom’s hand.
That afternoon some of them stayed with Alex and drank out on the porch. Others went to the beach. Vinnie said he was going for the boat ride and Dom said he would too but when they reached town Dom ended up in an amusement arcade and Vinnie drove back in disgust. Reb dispatched someone in the Buick to fetch Dom. When by some mystery at around five o’clock they were all eight together again, lit up, laughing, clowning, they sang, ‘Avanti, o popolo, alla riscossa, Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa.’
Lee and Reb, as the sons of anarchists, had sung the line bandiera nera. Black was the anarchist color. They had all sung, good Catholics and lapsed, atheists and agnostics, ‘Rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, rivoluzione noi vogliamo fà, evviva il socialismo e la libertà.’
But what Reb and Lee sang, winking at each other, was evviva l’anarchismo. Everyone agreed it had been a splendid day, a lot of fun, a really good time.
By Saturday night they were stunned. Stunned by the sea and salt air and sun. Stunned by overeating. Stunned by drink. Saving himself, Reb was less stunned than the others. In the peace and dullness that followed dinner, Wiggy and Dom stayed on in the kitchen to clean up. The rest of them, sprawled on the living room furniture, looked as if they were waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Lee said if two tables were set up they could all play scopa.
‘Play with Reb?’ Vinnie said. ‘After what he pulled last night hiding the sevens and misdealing? Nothing doing.’
‘That was last night,’ Alex said.
‘Never mind,’ Reb said. ‘I don’t feel like cards tonight anyway.’
‘Me neither,’ Sal said.
That was that. Alex and Vinnie challenged Chub and Lee to whist. The card table was set in place and a floor lamp dragged beside it.
‘Feeling beat as hell, Sal,’ Reb said. ‘Think I’ll go in and grab me an hour of sleep.’
Sal followed Reb into the bedroom, set down a bottle of VO and a glass, and sat on one of the beds. Kicking off his shoes Reb stretched out on the other bed.
‘Remember what I was saying this afternoon?’ Sal opened. ‘About when I first came to work for your father and they told me to watch out for them guys that wear the farfalla neckties? You know who it was told me that?’
To make his intention clear Reb mustered a yawn.
‘My wife’s old man and all my brother in laws,’ Sal said. ‘That’s who.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Reb said. ‘They don’t know my father, do they?’
‘No, but they must of heard he was a Bolshevik. They know he named your brother Atheist. They’ve got religion coming out of their ass in that family. Most of them are in church six o’clock every morning. Yeah. My wife meets them there. That’s why I gotta laugh when you tell me why don’t I get her fixed up. But you oughta see the way they run their business. Real crooks.’ Sal poured himself some whiskey.
‘You mean the heavy equipment?’
‘Yeah,’ Sal said. ‘Shovels, dozers, trucks. What I was doing when I was with them.’
‘Oh. One time you mentioned they owned some property.’
‘That’s only a sideline. A block of stores and apartments. Some half ass lawyer handles it for them. He thieves off of them and they thieve off of him. They had me worried about you guys at first. But it didn’t take long to see that the ones supposed to be all heathens or atheists or what the hell you guys are treat me better than my own in laws. Can you beat that?’
‘Ha,’ Reb said.
‘Telling me watch out for them that don’t go to church backfired ha ha. I’m more scared of the ones that go every day now.’
‘Yeah?’ Reb said.
‘You know what their idea of doing something good is? Putting up a marble statue of the Virgin in Saint Leonard’s Church. In memory of the dead sister. This big it is too. But will bastards like that do anything to help the living? Like hell. And they shelled out two or three thousand bucks for it.’
‘Some people are like that.’ Reb let his head sink into the pillow.
‘They were paying me sixty a week before I had the fight and quit. Sixty lousy bucks. There I was married to their daughter and on top of that I had two kids and the third coming. That’s the kind of shits they are.’
‘They had you in bondage.’ Reb’s eyes were shut. ‘Yeah. But if they could of seen me a couple of hours ago. Singing a Communist song. Ooh, I’d of given anything to have seen them on that porch.’
Reb lifted himself onto one elbow. ‘That wasn’t Communist.’
‘Well, Bolshevik then. What’s the difference.’
‘Wasn’t that either.’
‘Well, anyway, what the hell ever it was I enjoyed myself.’
‘You’re a good guy, Sal.’ Reb dropped back and gave a big yawn.
‘Listen. You really want to know what kind of people they are?’ Sal said. ‘Well, until a couple of years ago the old lady burned wood in the stove.’
‘Burned wood?’ Reb said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s true. They own this frigging mansion but they never go upstairs. They live down the cellar and when she cooks the old lady burns wood in the stove.’
‘You mean they ain’t got no gas?’ Reb sat up straight.
‘They do now but three or four years ago they didn’t. Summer and winter she used to cook with wood.’
‘But why?’ Reb said.
‘I don’t know,’ Sal said. ‘There’s always a lot of scrap wood around construction jobs. They’d fill up sacks and take them home. Keep the stuff nice and neat in a shed out back.’
‘Boy, they must be tight bastards.’
‘Tight? That’s misery.’
Reb forced another yawn and lay back flat again.
‘And that’s what I married into,’ Sal said.
‘I’m gonna take a little snooze now, Sal. Only for an hour. Why don’t you do the same?’
‘I feel like talking. That’s why I didn’t wanna play cards.’
‘We’ll talk a little more when I get up,’ Reb said, ‘Take the bottle out there and help yourself to it. There’s plenty.’
Reb dozed, lulled by the voices of the card players. Sal spoke. ‘That’s right,’ Reb mumbled. ‘Talk to the guys. And flip the light off on your way, will you.’
Sal left the door ajar. Reb turned to the wall and immediately sank into sleep. After some time there were bursts of laughter and hilarity from the living room. Reb stirred lazily, then plunged a wrist down to the floor to read his watch in the streak of light coming in the door. Only twenty minutes had passed.
He heard Vinnie say, ‘Thinks he’s a strongman.’
He heard Lee say, ‘Ha ha. You must spend all your time in the saddle, huh, Sal?’
Sal said, ‘Number five ha ha. In six years and a half.’
Alex said, ‘If you don’t give it a rest from time to time you’ll wear it out.’
Everybody hawhawed. Then cards were shuffled. Reb faced the wall again.
One of them said, ‘This wife of yours. Is she Irish?’
Sal said, ‘Irish your ass. Sicilian. Half nigger.’
‘Take it easy with that kind of talk,’ Chub said.
‘Don’t tell me how to talk,’ Sal said.
Sal’s voice had a nasty edge Reb had never heard before. He sprang off the bed, wriggled into his shoes, and was through the door.
‘There’s nothing to get sore about, Sal,’ Vinnie said.
‘Lay off of him you guys,’ Reb said, blinking. ‘Well, well. The US cavalry,’ Lee said.
‘We’re only having a game of cards,’ Chub said.
‘Cards my ass. I heard what was going on.’ Reb saw by the bottle that Sal had hit the fifth hard.
‘We were only talking,’ Sal said.
‘Come on now, Sal,’ Reb said. ‘Don’t make a nuisance out of yourself. The guys wanna play cards.’
‘Since when can’t a man talk to his friends about his own family? Tell him, Al. Was I busting up your game?’
‘Friends or no friends, you don’t wanna go around saying things you might be sorry about the next day,’ Reb said.
‘What the hell did he say that was so bad?’ Lee said.
‘I didn’t say the half of it. Ain’t drunk enough to say ha ha. What’s in here.’ Sal thumped his chest.
‘He ain’t a baby,’ Vinnie said. ‘Leave him alone.’
‘I want you guys to lay off pushing him,’ Reb said.
‘The big dictator,’ Chub said.
Reb looked to Alex for support. Alex shrugged. ‘It was all in fun, Reb,’ he said.
‘Hey, Rebbie.’ Sal was on the couch slapping the cushion beside him. ‘Sit down here a minute.’
Alex dealt a new hand. Reb sat. Why did they want to see a man make a fool of himself?
‘The guys all know my wife’s having another kid, okay? You know what happens next? Do you?’
‘Calm down, Sal. What happens next?’
‘Her goddam old lady comes to live with us.’
‘Well, that’s good ain’t it?’ Reb said. ‘She helps out around the house.’
‘Full of shit up to your ears, Rebbie. When she’s in the house I don’t get near the wife. No, she says. Not with my mother in the next room.’
Reb lifted his glance to the table. The players fooled with their hands, their real attention on Sal. ‘You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill,’ Chub said. ‘You don’t get laid that last month anyhow. Rebbie’s right. You gonna take a vacation? Who the hell’s gonna mind the four kids?’
‘Who’s talking about any last month?’ Sal said.
‘She’ll be moving in in two more weeks. This is another half a year affair at least. That broad lives with us more than in her own house.’
‘Well, put your foot down,’ Reb said.
‘I try. When she tells me not with my mother in the house I say kick her the fuck out then. Don’t talk that way she’ll hear you. I want her to hear me.’
The players exchanged looks.
‘After that I’m not grateful for all her family done for me. What have they done? Gave me a piece of land and built me a house on it I never could of afforded. Sure. But her old man holds the mortgage. I pay him the same interest you pay a bank.’
Wiggy and Dom peered in from the kitchen. Reb wished he had let Sal spill it all out in the privacy of the bedroom.
‘I told her once about getting fixed up and she says what’s the matter with your education. Don’t you know that’s a sin against God. And there was her family making me toe the mark to hang on to the house. Every Sunday morning I hadda help them oiling and greasing the equipment. If I had a nickel for every time them brothers of hers threw it in my face about the house they gave me. Gave. They raised my pay after two years from fiftyfive to sixty a week. One day I was fed up to here and went straight to the old man and told him off. Look. You can still make out the scar. Her biggest brother jumps me on the spot and takes three stitches over my eye. Mauro. Get the hell out he yells at me. And don’t try going back to my daughter the old man says. You telling me I’m fired I says. That’s right he says. And get out of my daughter’s house too.’
Sal’s eyes were wild.
‘Gee, Sal,’ Reb said. One by one he searched the others’ faces. In turn each averted his gaze.
‘Some night that was,’ Sal said. ‘My wife sided with them. They told her I jumped the old man. Me. I was always scared shitless of him even though he was over sixty. I got home with blood all over my face, the two kids started crying their eyes out, and there’s Mary yelling get out. Get out. I would have too. That same minute. They all wanted me out. That’s when I made up my mind to stick ha ha. My revenge on them.’
Sal’s eyes glassy. In the corners water had gathered.
‘Easy now, Sal,’ Reb said. He reached out and squeezed Sal’s shoulder.
‘It was three months after that night before she let me touch her again,’ Sal said. ‘That was the third kid.’
Reb turned to the kitchen doorway. Wiggy’s sleeves were rolled up, his hands wet. Dom held a dishtowel and grinned. Vultures. ‘You guys finished in there?’ Reb said.
‘Pretty near,’ Dom said.
‘Then take care of your business,’ Reb said. ‘And you guys. If you’re still playing cards play.’ He was out of the room and back again with the last unopened bottle of whiskey. One drink for Sal. One for himself. And around the table he went filling each player’s glass. He called in Dom and Wiggy. He poured two more shots. ‘Okay. We’re all having a round together now. Friends.’
It was quick and in silence. The players bid.
Dom and Wiggy withdrew.
‘You’re a good guy, Rebbie,’ Sal said. ‘Another?’ Reb held out the bottle. The quicker Sal knocked himself out the better. ‘Sure.’
‘Gonna stay calm now, Sal baby?’
‘Like a rock now, Rebbie. Gonna stay like a rock.’
‘Atta boy.’
After washing his face and combing his hair Reb put on a fresh shirt, then his suit, then his new tie. At the card table there was excitement but it was impossible to tell winner from loser. A quick succession of bursting hisses came from the kitchen as someone opened four or five cans of beer.
‘Hey, Dom. Make it one more,’ Vinnie said. ‘Here’s Reb.’
‘Where’s Sal?’ Reb said.
‘Out for a breath of air,’ Chub said. ‘It’ll do him good. Cool him off.’
‘Joe Harvard with that necktie again,’ Lee said. ‘Ha ha.’
Dom brought the beers in. Reb refused his. ‘Ivy League,’ Lee said. ‘They drink martinis.’
‘Nah,’ Reb said. ‘Beer on the rocks. But for us Harvard boys the glass gotta have a handle on it.’
‘Hey, Lee,’ Vinnie said. ‘Remember that job we done over in Cambridge? You ever seen them Harvard guys, Alex? They wear chino pants when they get dressed up. Chino pants. I wear chinos mixing mortar on the job for chrissake.’
‘Boy, I don’t know what the broads see in them guys,’ Lee said. ‘They don’t even know what a nice crease is in a pair of pants.’
‘Where I come from that Ivy League is nothing,’ Chub said.
‘Look who’s talking,’ Reb said. ‘Them guys got more brains in their little finger than you got in your whole head.’
‘Yeah?’ Chub said. ‘Then brains ain’t everything.’
‘Look at him,’ Lee said. ‘Defending those guys.’
‘Why not?’ Reb said. ‘Anybody with brains is better than guys like us.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Vinnie said. ‘I don’t know,’ Reb said. ‘It just came to me.’
‘Then you better take off that suit and that tie,’ Vinnie said. ‘They’re making you act queer.’
‘Them broads of theirs are a little dizzy too if you ask me,’ Lee said. ‘Going around in raincoats in the middle of the winter.’
‘That’s nothing,’ Vinnie said. ‘One day I seen one coming down the street wearing Bermuda shorts under her raincoat and no shoes. No shoes in the middle of Cambridge. That’s nutty.’
‘That’s brains for you,’ Lee said.
‘I know what you like them broads for,’ Vinnie said.
‘What?’ Reb said.
‘Them college girls will do anything that’s what.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They suck.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I heard.’
‘Hmmm,’ Alex said.
‘Where?’ Reb said. ‘Hanging around the drugstore in Putnam Falls?’
‘What’s wrong with the Falls now?’ Vinnie said.
‘Nothing’s wrong with the Falls,’ Reb said. ‘Only nobody in the Falls ever seen the inside of high school that’s all.’
‘Huh. Now look who’s talking,’ Chub said. ‘Did you finish high school?’
‘That ain’t what I’m saying.’
‘What are you trying to say then?’ Lee said.
‘I don’t know,’ Reb said. ‘It’s just you guys piss me off sometimes. Anything different you make fun of.’
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Alex said.
‘Naw.’ Reb stole a glance at his watch and waited for a new game to start. It did. ‘Sal went out then, huh?’
‘You oughta get the wax cleaned out of your ears,’ Chub said.
‘Maybe we better keep an eye on him,’ Reb said. And he was out of the room and halfway across the kitchen. Wiggy stood by the sink drying his hands. ‘Forgot you were still in here. I was just gonna see if Sal’s outside.’
Wiggy’s arm went out in an arc. ‘Finished,’ he said. ‘Looks good, huh?’
‘Look’s great.’ Reb inspected his shoes.
He stood on the landing and squeezed the screen door shut behind him.