17

Maerose behaved much, much worse than Charley ever thought any woman could after a simple roll in the hay. As soon as they recovered from it, she carried on like she had lost her mind. She made plans for them to be together for every hour of the day and night when he wasn’t either working at the Laundry or sleeping. She wanted to go to Baltimore with him when he went to Baltimore. She talked like she was on some kind of hop about how she had never dreamed anything could be so wonderful; about how she realized all at once that she had never been in love before in her life. She demanded to know if he loved her, then before he could answer, thank God, she wanted to know when they should tell Vincent and the don. Tell them what? Charley thought. That he had banged their daughter and granddaughter? Tell Vincent a thing like that and Vincent would zotz him. Charley tried smiling his way out of it, but he just didn’t have the experience, he was totally outclassed. What had seemed to come out of left field was a big boulder Maerose had thrown at him. He didn’t know how to defend himself, but she knew exactly what was happening.

Somehow they got dressed again and made it down to the van and Charley still hadn’t committed himself, but he had no idea how he had done it. “Oh, Charley,” she said as they were driving across south Brooklyn to Vincent’s house in Bensonhurst, “Poppa is gonna be so happy.”

“Happy?”

“A union of the two families who made the whole Prizzi presence in America possible. Corrado Prizzi’s granddaughter and the son of his oldest friend, his consigliere.”

“Union?”

“Let’s keep it a secret just a little while longer. Let’s live inside this golden happiness for at least a few more days before we tell my father.”

“Are you—are you saying we’re engaged, Mae?”

She turned to him with her eyes shining. “Isn’t that what you wanted? To share one life together, for me to have your children—isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Jesus, Mae, everything happened so fast, I can’t really think. It’s such a new idea to me.”

“New? Then what were you thinking about when you—when you—took me—today? Did you think that I was just some—”

“No! No, no! But it happened so fast. I’m just saying yes—you’re right—let’s wait a little while before we tell Vincent.”

“Oh, my darling.”

Charley had been living at his father’s house on Eighty-first Street in Bensonhurst while the apartment was being decorated. It was the place Charley thought of as home; where his mother had taught him to cook and to respect the meaning of cleanliness. While he waited for Pop to come home Charley made pumaruoro o gratte—baked tomatoes filled with anchovies, minced salami, capers and bread crumbs—and he laid out the cylindrical tubes of hard pastry flavored with spice, coffee, cocoa, and lemon for the cannoli, then filled them with ricotta cheese and sugar flavored with vanilla so he and Pop could have a light supper while they talked. He kept looking at the clock, then he went into the living room and vacuumed the tops of the moldings and the picture frames because the girl could never seem to remember to do that. Pop got home at about a quarter to eight. He was knocked out that Charley had made two of his favorites for dinner.

Charley didn’t know how to talk about what was happening to him. He couldn’t get it together at dinner. Afterward, they went into the parlor with the overstuffed chairs, the lampshades with the long golden fringes, the upright piano his mother used to play, and the beer steins lined up all around the room on the shelf that was the ceiling molding. When he was a small boy, Charley had wanted to take the steins down to study them up close, but his mother always said they looked better from a distance. He still looked up to see them whenever he came into the room.

“Pop?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta talk to you.”

“Whatsa matta?”

“I been going over it in my head and I can’t hardly figure out how it happened, but Maerose Prizzi thinks her and me is engaged.”

“Engaged?”

“Like engaged to be married.”

“You and Maerose? Well, Jesus. That’s terrific. What’s the problem?”

“Pop, I—I don’t know how—I mean—shit, Pop—one minute we hardly knew each other and the next minute she was saying how happy Vincent and the don are gonna be because we are engaged.”

“Whatta you mean, Charley?”

“She decorated my apartment. So today it was finished so she said we hadda go out and look at it.”

“So?”

“So we looked at it. It was terrific. Then she says, Carry me across the threshold, Charley. She was dressed all in white. She had a rose in her hand.”

“Like a bride?”

“Yeah. So I lifted her up and carried her across—I closed the door—then I look at her and she’s getting all hot so I don’t think, I do what anybody would do, I take her in the bedroom and I—yeah.”

“You mean—”

“Yeah.”

“Maerose Prizzi?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you are wondering why she says you and her is engaged?”

“Pop, listen—”

“What’s wrong with being engaged to Corrado Prizzi’s granddaughter? You’ll inherit the earth! In a couple years you’ll be Boss. Whatta you so edgy about?”

“I don’t love her.”

“So you’ll get to love her. She’s lovable! She’s gorgeous! She’s talented! Tell me something she isn’t.”

“She isn’t the woman for me. I’m in love with somebody else.”

Pop’s jaw dropped. “No kidding?”

“Would I kid you? About a thing as important as this? What am I supposed to do?”

“There are things about Vincent you don’t know, Charley. When he was young. Believe me, Vincent can be an animal and he is all fucked up when it comes to honor. There was a guy who Vincent said peed on his honor who went to the movies. He sits in the back row. Vincent grabs the first thing he can find, a hammer, and he goes inna movie house. He hits the guy onna head with the claw end of the hammer and it goes right through. Vincent is very touchy when it comes to honor.”

“It don’t need to come to that.”

“The way Vincent is out of his head about honor, that’s how the don feels about gratitude, only he calls it disloyalty. If Mae tells them she is engaged to you, even if she doesn’t say nothing about how she got engaged to you, then if you try to say you ain’t engaged to her you’re gonna have Vincent on your ass about honor and the don all over you about disloyalty. I don’t know which is worse.”

“I can’t dump my main woman, Pop. There are very tricky reasons.”

“What reasons are better than staying alive?”

“I can’t, Pop. I’m telling you.”

“Who is this woman?”

“She’s in the show at the Latino. She thinks I’m a salesman.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mardell La Tour.”

“What’s her real name?”

“Mulligan.”

“Mardell—it’s probably Margaret. Call her Margaret and see what happens.”

“I like the Mardell better. She’s English.”

“English descent?”

“From England.”

“Mulligan don’t sound English.”

“She oughta know. She’s from Shahffsbree, England. You should see how they spell it. I looked it up. It’s not near anything. Her father who left them when she was twelve died of leprosy, her mother told her.”

“That’s unusual.”

“She believes it. Nobody can talk her out of it. I tell her the mother said the father was a leper just as her way of saying he was the worst. She don’t even hear me.”

“What has all that got to do with Vincent maybe putting out a contract on you?”

“Because she goes to pieces if I say I’m gonna be away for a couple of days. I can’t walk out on her. I’m afraid of what she’ll do to herself. She’s a little crazy, Mardell, but tremendous. A valuable woman. She can’t cook, but she tries. I tell her, please, it’s not you. I can’t figure out how she fits in the bathtub she’s got. I gotta tell you, Pop. She breaks my heart sometimes.”

“She could be acting. Women are funny.”

“No. She’s always worrying. Jesus, sometimes she puts different-colored shoes on.”

“She wears colored shoes?”

“I tell her, listen—if anybody gives you any trouble, I’ll drop him off a bridge. Whatta you worried about, I say to her. She says, Who’s worried, I’m not worried. I ask her, How come you put different-colored shoes on?”

“We gotta face up to this, Charley.”

“It finally comes out that she thinks she isn’t good enough for people. I couldn’t even figure out what she was talking about. A beautiful girl, a funny girl, a smart girl in a lotta ways. How can she think she isn’t good enough?”

“I knew a woman once who thought she was a shit because all her life her mother told her she was a shit.”

“I grab her. I say—you want twenny-five thousand dollars cash? How many people you think you ain’t good enough for are walking around with twenny-five thousand dollars cash?”

“What did she say?”

“She said, How long is it since I put different-colored shoes on? I don’t think like I used to think anymore. You know why? Because you love me and anybody who has a man like you to love them has to know they are good enough for anybody in the world.”

“You got a problem.”

“I ask her how come she forgets to eat if I don’t tell her to eat?”

“She is certainly different.”

“I think she is also a little crazy. She does a special number on radio beams you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe it. You got George F. Mallon trying to work up a case to send you to the hot seat. You are fooling around with peeing on Vincent Prizzi’s honor and Corrado Prizzi’s idea of what is loyal. What you need is a good radio beam. You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch cancer.”