60

Flying to New York, Charley hardly knew that it was himself sitting in the airplane. His wheelchair had been folded and stored. He had been lifted into a well reclined first-class seat in the front row. His plastered leg was sticking out into the aisle, his nose was held in place with sticking plasters, and he wore a tight skullcap of plaster around his head. He had borrowed a two-ounce tinfoil smack container from the Seattle people to carry the four thumbs in and they were well sealed and secure in the pocket of his overcoat hanging in the forward locker.

Everything that was new and unknown in his life was spinning out in front of him. He wondered if Pop could fix it so that the mayor’s engagement present to him and Maerose could be quietly transferred just to him. The Garden Grove apartments weren’t in Brooklyn and it was a gorgeous layout, anybody could tell from the flyer the mayor had sent in lieu of a wrapped present, and he and Mardell had to have a classy place to start their married life, a place which wouldn’t be too close to the Prizzis.

He had to straighten Mardell out on this booze thing. She had to swear off it. He knew where he could lay his hands on two solid magazine articles by doctors that showed what booze could do to vitamin deficiency. He didn’t need any outside evidence to show what it did to the head.

The main thing was that they had to get married so she would understand that nothing could ever shake them up again the way she had let herself get shaken up. Jesus, wait until she saw the plaster helmet he was wearing under his hat plus the wheelchair and the nose, and she would see how crazy she had been to think he had run out on her.

After he found her and got her started on drying out, he would have to call Eduardo and have him line up a judge to handle the wedding, call Pop to be his witness, then go someplace and get married. It put him through a wringer just thinking about it, but he had to do it. She needed him. It had all worked out, just the way Pop said it would. Maerose had run away. He wouldn’t ever understand where she’d found the moxie to do it. It was all settled. Everything was the way Maerose wanted it, but he knew in his heart that if the engagement party had gone through the way everybody expected it to happen, then the whole thing would have worked out to be exactly the opposite. He would have married Maerose. He might have had a few bad weeks, but he would have gotten over Mardell. It would have all been settled. But Maerose had run away from him. He still felt her somewhere near around him, like in the air or something, but what the hell, she had solved everything. She had cut loose because that was the only way she could tell him that he didn’t have to go through with marrying her. He had certainly made a production out of not being engaged to her, but what else could he do? He was lucky, he supposed. He never’d had to choose between Mae and Mardell. Thank God. It had all worked itself out, just the way Pop said. But, for a guy in his business, he had certainly missed grabbing the brass ring. He could have been married to a Prizzi. He could have been a key part of the inner Prizzi family. His kids could have been Prizzis with all the clout that brought with it. Instead, although he kidded himself about having made the right choice, about marrying the woman who needed him most, when he got off the plane and looked at Marty Pomerantz he knew what he was going to hear. His heart froze in midbeat as the realization came over him. Mardell had loved him so much but she had decided that she had lost him because she got nothing but silence for twelve days, three lifetimes with Mardell’s kind of dependency and loneliness, and she had killed herself.

He brought both hands up and covered his face. He tried not to make any sounds.

“Are you all right, Mr. Marino?” the stewardess asked.

The flight got into La Guardia at 7:10 A.M. Marty Pomerantz was waiting for him. He hadn’t told Pop he was coming in. This was about Mardell, not business.

Charley and his wheelchair were lowered to the tarmac and then he was rolled into the airport building.

Marty was just standing there, looking like an undertaker. Charley got the message. Marty didn’t have to talk. Mardell had killed herself. It was all over. She was gone and nothing could bring her back. She had decided that he had deserted her and that he was never coming back, so she’d killed herself.

“Okay, Marty,” he said in a choked voice. “Give it to me straight.”

“Jesus, Charley, they really wrecked you. I had no idea.”

“Never mind that, fahcrissake—what about Mardell? Did you give the super the hunnert bucks?”

“Yeah.”

“And you found her lying there?”

“She wasn’t there, Charley. All that time we were breaking our hearts about her she wasn’t even in the apartment.”

“What?” He couldn’t believe he was hearing what Marty was saying.

“I found a letter on the kitchen table. It’s addressed to you.” Marty slid an envelope out of the side pocket of his overcoat and handed it to Charley. Charley looked down at it dumbly. He had never felt such a vast sense of absolute relief. She was alive somewhere. He didn’t know where but she was okay. He felt like some kind of a conservationist who has just saved something of value from some kind of toxic waste. He hadn’t saved her. But she was saved. She was okay. And he knew that inside that letter was a message from her that lifted him right off the hook. He had done right with Mardell and now she was going to do right with him. She had lifted him right off the hook. Both of the greatest women in his life had lifted him right off the hook. He knew it. The letter was going to be a Dear John, and it would be all fixed up. Everything had worked itself out. He was absolutely in the clear. There was no possibility anymore that he was going to break the hearts of two women.

He stuffed the letter into his coat pocket. He stared at Marty. Marty looked like he expected to be clipped because he brought the bad news. Charley reached over and patted Marty on the sleeve to let him know that it was okay, that he didn’t blame anybody. He grinned at Marty dopily. He wheeled the chair out toward the cab rank, humming “These Foolish Things.” Marty came after him saying, “I got a limo for you, Charley.”

The limo took Charley out to the beach. The driver manhandled Charley and the wheelchair out of the car. Charley gave him twenty dollars and then rolled the chair into the elevator and rode up to his floor. He let himself into the apartment and, keeping on his overcoat, wool cap, and scarf, he rolled the chair out on the terrace, working hard to relax before opening Mardell’s letter.

“Dearest Charley,” the letter said, “I am going to try to be very direct because you don’t deserve less than that.” (Her pen had paused in flight. She knew she wasn’t going to be at all direct with him, she was going to have to tell him perfectly awful lies but that was the only way to make absolutely everyone in the whole set piece happy again.) “I met a marvelous man while I was in the hospital, a world-famous Brazilian psychiatrist who became interested in the radio beams that, you will remember, have been coming to me from Buckingham Palace. We fell in love, really in love. By the time you get this—if indeed you do come back to the apartment—I will have been married on the high seas on my way to Brazil. We will live in São Paulo, high on a mountaintop, surrounded by brilliantly colored parrots. I will never forget you. Mardell”

Just like Pop said, everything had come up roses.

He sat on the terrace in the early morning December cold until it was sometime in the afternoon when he rolled himself into bed, humming “These Foolish Things” like an electric cello.