You never saw Angelina unless she was watering her lawn. She would come out early, do the front and then the back. She never missed unless it was raining, so she had the best lawn in the neighborhood, where the lawns are stamp-small but neat and lush.
It’s dead quiet over here in South Ozone Park except for the intermittent scream of planes in and out of Kennedy airport. But after you’ve been here a couple of years you don’t hear them anymore. My Molly wakes up when she hears the cat coming home next door and that means I’m up. We go around the block, left, in case that loose male dog is hanging around the boulevard. We pass Angelina as she’s lugging her hose down her driveway. I think when she sees us turning the corner she knows it’s time to do the yard. Then we come home, the News is on the stoop, and we have our breakfast.
I was concerned when I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. I knew she had a daughter, so I wasn’t too worried. But then Angelina’s lawn started to parch and I really thought something might have happened so I went up past the statue of Saint Anthony and I rang the bell. Angelina’s got the air-conditioner cranking from June to September and the brick house has that fortress feel to it. It took her long enough. I was just about to walk away when she opened the door a crack. “Hey,” I said, “I didn’t see you for a while. How you doin?”
She looked at me with uninterested eyes.
“You okay?” I said. “I mean, if you want me to carry the hose out for you, I can.”
Angelina shrugged. “Na,” she said. She made a mouth like when you get a piece of bad calamari. Her housedress was as usual black. I remembered her husband was dead three years, a mere flash in a Sicilian pan. And she looked like she hadn’t been sleeping.
“You want me to call your daughter?”
Suddenly there was life under those heavy lids. “No!” she said. Behind her the television droned.
I thought of my son, still in bed. “I gotta go. Listen, you want my number? Just in case you need someone to call in an emergency?”
For a second I thought I saw a spark of interest. But “No.” She tipped her head in polite dismissal. “So long.” She shut the door.
I had my crossword-puzzle ballpoint in my pocket and left my number on a coupon and stuck it in her mailbox anyhow.
Then I didn’t see her for a while. I’d never had more to do with her than a careful nod; now there I was thinking about her every day. It was one of those real hot summers. One evening it was so hot we overloaded the electric, and the air-conditioner broke down before supper. All the windows were thrown open and a squirrel came right up on a branch bold as you please and looked at us. “Close the window, Anthony,” I worried, “or he’ll come in and we’ll never get him out.” But Molly jumped up barking and that took care of him. “Westies are ratters at heart,” my husband informed us, his voice tight with respect. He was in a good mood because he’d just finished paying the bills. He suddenly recalled when he was a kid and Angelina’s husband used to string the clothesline over a vat of boiling water on the barbecue and smear the line with peanut butter. Then he’d shoot the squirrel and it would drop into the boiling water. Anthony stopped eating. I must have turned pale. “Whatsa matter?” Tony laughed. “You don’t eat meat? Whaddya think, it comes like that all nice and ready in a package?”
I stood up and scraped the rest of my rigatonis into the trash.
“And,” he remembered with a jolt of sudden interest, “he had the best grapevine in the neighborhood. He gave Nonno his shoot.” He chewed a wad of mozzarella and washed it down with our homemade. “Come to think of it, the vine we have in our yard came from Nonno so it must have come from that one. A man like that”—he shook his head sympathetically—“would be sorely missed.”
I stood at the window looking out at the backyard. The vine above the picnic table was heavy with grapes and bees.
The next day I went up and rang the bell again and this time she answered right away. “Whatsa matter now?” she said.
“Look, Angelina, you want me to water your lawn?”
“No. Good-bye.”
“Listen.” I put my hand on the door. “I don’t mean to be pushy or anything. Don’t misunderstand me, I just—What is that, anyway? That aroma? What is that?” I peeked in past the yellow velvet living room enshrined in fitted vinyl. The kitchen was pink and gray, like fifties poodle skirts.
“I gotta sauce onna stove.” She pursed her lips and flapped her two arms folded on her stomach. “Braciole.”
“Wow.”
“Anh. You gotta nose. So what?” The door shuts, caboom, in my face.
Nice. No good deed goes unpunished, I’m thinking. Huh. Well, that’s the end of that. Her daughter must be coming for her to be cooking. Whenever she comes she’s loaded down with shopping bags of broccoli rabe and like that. At least I know the old girl won’t starve. And I go home.
Ten days pass. Now Angelina’s got no more front lawn. It’s brown and it’s all over. My mother-in-law tells my husband her neighbor told her that Angelina’s daughter got a firm offer on the house from a Pakistani family and she’s pushing Angelina to move to a “maturity” condo in Jersey. Personally, I’ve never cared much for the daughter. She wears those slithery leisure suits and drives a Mary Kay executive convertible. I know because she parks this on my corner, worried that the drug dealers who live next door to her mother will steal it. I hate to tell her, but they probably wouldn’t be caught dead.
And where is Angelina going to find Locatelli cheese in the wilds of New Jersey? Where is she going to find veal like at Suino d’Oro? Over here she can take the Q10 up to Liberty Avenue and she’s got everything right there. Or she can take her shopping cart and walk. It’s not that far. There’s a kind of intimacy strangers share when they see each other every day. Now I’m not one of these do-gooders my husband accuses me of being. It’s just I get a feeling Angelina’s maybe fading away because she has nothing left to live for. It makes me think of that dog we avoid. He’s old and he’s mean and he lives over in the airport parking lots, existing on scraps of who knows what from the Domino’s Pizza garbage disposal. Once in a while he comes around the boulevard and my softhearted neighbor, who is Dutch, puts out rice in a plastic bag folded over like a dish. He hangs around a day or two, suspicious and hungry, then slinks back across the parkway. Every time I see him he looks baggier. I avoid him because my Molly isn’t fixed and that’s all I need. Sometimes, late at night, teenagers from Lefferts Boulevard throw stones at him and I can hear him barking back, outraged but weary.
Sunday night Molly gets a full walk before bed. Monday morning is recycle day and all the cans are out, plus, you get a lot of really old stuff thrown away and you wouldn’t believe some of the great things people throw away: old books and perfectly good iron frying pans! I noticed Angelina’s recycle garbage was just a lot of empty tomato soup cans. But hey, none of this concerns me. My husband wants me to mind my own business and I do. I hurry Molly past the drug dealers’ house, whose recycle bins are loaded with broken Bombay Gin and Johnnie Walker Black bottles.
A smeary, rotten stench is oozing from their garbage bags and I yank Molly—who yearns for just that sort of thing—briskly away.
Monday rolls around and who do I see on the street meandering behind the garbage truck but this dog. I mean, doesn’t anybody do anything around here about stray dogs? They must, I figure, but everyone knows what happens if you call. They come and get it and the next thing you know they put it to sleep. I’m standing on my porch and I’m thinking what is he? Shepherd? Rottweiler? And a side order of Husky, the tail, despite everything, still more up than down. That has to tell you something. A big old guy, big feet, big head, big balls hanging down. Everything loose like he was once good and stocky. What this guy needs is someone who loves to cook.
So I already know what you’re thinking but I’m way ahead of you. Anthony is watching a SpongeBob video and eating his favorite: buttery Eggos. Tony is sound asleep on the couch and the truck is tucked in on Rockaway Boulevard so he’s not going anywhere. I lock the door. It cost me all the doggy biscuits I keep in my pocket for Molly to lure him around the block. I spot a jump rope on fat Anita’s front lawn and I slip it around the damn dog’s neck. Now I’m dirty and already I’m annoyed. And maybe I’m dead if he decides to go for me. But I’ve been attending Anu Butani’s yoga class on Thursdays and I’m starting to get it so I ease myself into well intention.
I go and I ring Angelina’s bell. No answer. But meanwhile I know she’s home because she’s got an opera on, Puccini, which is good because we want her in that kind of mood. The only trouble is Angelina won’t answer. And next door, the venetian blinds upstairs crack a little bit open and I can almost feel myself being observed. I’m not giving up yet, though. I take the pig’s ear I was saving for Molly’s big-job reward. I rub it all over Angelina’s front doorstep, then push it halfway in the ledge of her mail slot. I look in that old dog’s big brown anticipating eyes. “You’re going to have to take it from here,” I tell him, and I pull the jump rope off his head.
I walk away and the stupid dog comes gangling after me. “Look,” I say, walking him back to the stoop, “you come with me, I’m going to chase you away and you’ll wind up back by the garbage container. Stay here, play your cards right, and you can be eating cavatelli every Tuesday. Make a decision.”
I walk away holding my breath. He doesn’t come after me but now I’m afraid to turn around and see if he’s staying there. I just keep going, then I go home and take my Molly around the other block, by Lefferts Boulevard. There’s only so much you can do.
Well, a couple of weeks go by. I’m still walking Molly around by Lefferts Boulevard by Don Peppe’s restaurant and the supermarket there. She loved it while it was new and fresh, but after a while she’s not interested, she just won’t go. She wants to go back her old way. If you’ve ever known a West Highland terrier you know they can be very stubborn. So this day I take her back our regular old way. The smell of garlic mingles with olive oil and thick tomatoes from the yard—and basilico. Basil grows like a weed from the gray cement under the brick from every house around here. What a smell! It’s got to be Angelina frying sausages and what do I see? Angelina’s backyard chain-link fence is locked with one of those school locker combination locks and who’s in there? Angelina’s back door slams and I hear, “Bruno! Bruno, venga a chi!” There’s that big old dog lying down on an apricot chenille rug on the dirt. He does not move but his tail thumps encouragingly, swatting the dust. Good thing there’s no grass to ruin. I pat myself on the back and walk home slow. Bruno, eh? Bene.
Then one day, Sunday, the phone rings and to my surprise it’s Angelina. She’s all upset. The drug dealers who bought the house next to hers are having a party. Everyone in this neighborhood knows they’re drug dealers. They’ve got so much money they don’t know what to do with it. Two guys. One of them is really handsome, in a dark and dangerous, drug-dealer sort of way. I personally thought he looked kind of nice. Running slowly to his four-by-four with darkened windows in a happy, thrifty gait.
They have a fiberglass boat on the driveway, wrought iron bars on the windows and doors. Right away when they moved in, it was instant landscape and all exotics; bonsais, eucalyptus, and palm trees even outside. They have no idea what winter is like here. The cement people from Howard Beach arrived in a beautiful truck and did the whole driveway and the courtyard in pink cement. The word on the street is the pink comes from the blood of the drug dealer’s tardy clients. Only that’s too good to be true, my husband says. On feast days, they have so many lights up it looks like carnevale. Sometimes, when you hear shots at night, you know right away where they’re coming from.
So Angelina is very upset on the phone because these people are having a party since yesterday and the dog can’t take that mambo jambo music no more. Also, a van pulled up and eleven blond Polish girls were ushered in from a van. Or maybe Russian. They could have been Russian! She called the cops but they won’t do nothing till eleven at night and she’s going potza. Bruno barks the whole time. If they don’t a stop soon, she’s a gonna get out her husband Jasper’s pistoli he had since Mussolini and she’s a gonna shoot a the bastards one a by one in the head!
“Calma, Signora.” I soothe her as best I can over the phone, and peek out through my blinds upstairs from my bedroom. There’s a whole posse of snazzy cars with bras on their front fenders and smoked windows you can’t see through parked by that house. One of the cars bumps up and down on humungous tires to rectum-vibrating hip-hop.
What am I supposed to do? I listen to her go on and on. She’s “a gonna move to Florida!” She’s “a gonna take a the dog and never talk a nobody again!”
I feel bad because there’s something in her voice that tells me maybe she believes it herself. My husband’s busy helping Lefferts Louie and Richie the jeweler put the new air-conditioner in the wall. “Who is that?” Tony jerks his head and wants to know, in a bad mood.
“Oh,” he grunts, “the ball-breaker.”
I’ve got my cutlets ready for frying and the water’s starting to roll for the pasta. I figure as long as you let somebody vent, you mostly don't have to do anything at all.
“So, Tony,” Louie jokes, “how long do you think till you get the hell out of this neighborhood?”
“Seven years, I figure,” Tony tells him, shifting the air-conditioner up and off of his shoulder.
Seven years. Frozen, I sit down with the phone on Anthony’s little trucks on the floor.
So it’s two days after that, it’s raining and I’m upstairs in my closet with the cardboard box from the new air-conditioner, playing emotional tug-of-war with clothes I haven’t worn in over a year. The doorbell rings and it’s two detectives, the one short, the other tall. Now we have gold badges, close shaves, and the unforgettable smell of Old Spice. They’re investigating a drug deal that’s about to go down around the corner.
“About time,” I mutter.
“Are you aware there is drug traffic from that location?” the tall one says suspiciously.
“Yeah. Everybody knows,” I say right back. Who the hell is he? “It’s not like they’re living the low profile.”
“Let me put it to you this way,” the short cop says. “We’d like to use your upstairs back window in the next couple of days.”
“Come on in,” I say, and they do. Wait till I tell Angelina this, I think.
“What are the chances of getting a reward?” I ask the short one while we’re going up the stairs.
“Let me put it to you this way,” he says, “none.”
As soon as they leave, I put a leash on Molly and nonchalantly we walk over there. It’s five o’clock and butter yellow. We’re just turning the corner when I see Angelina’s daughter’s car parked in front of my Dutch neighbor Elly’s house. That takes care of that, I think, and Molly and I head slowly home. Molly is no fast walker, it’s more like you’re accompanying a serious student of dirt. So I’m still out on the corner when I see Angelina drive by in her daughter’s car. I’m happy to see she’s done something to her hair. She’s driving with the top down and there’s Bruno on the front seat, tongue jauntily flapping like a long necktie. I didn’t even know Angelina could drive. Angelina looks right at me and gives a sort of a start of a wave but she’s busy driving. I watch her drive all the way down Lefferts, past Don Peppe’s and onto the Belt.
For a while I linger outside. It’s still hot but the air doesn’t hurt like all day. Tony and Anthony are over at Holy Child playing CYO basketball so I have some time to kill before I start supper. There’s this new little cappuccino place on Lefferts and I go there for a ristretto. It’s kind of a rickety place and they let me bring Molly if I sit outside and she stays under the table. On the inside there’s this big mural on the wall of the hills of Abruzzi and I sit there looking in at it. A big loneliness fills up my heart as I sip my coffee and feed biscotti crumbs to my Molly. Who would have thought I’d have seven more years to live out in South Ozone Park? I read on the menu that the mural is not of the Italian hills but the Colombian rain forest. I don’t know what’s come over me. Then I get up and go home.
The kids from down the block come running up when they see me. They’re wild with excitement. “Did you hear what happened?”
“What?”
“All the cops were around the corner!”
I thought of my upstairs window and how now no undercover cops would be sitting there spying and my heart sank. “Did they arrest them already?”
“Nope. She got away!”
“Who? She?”
“Angelina! She got the hell away!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah! She got away with a lotta the money.” Abel bounces up and down. “She took it from the safe house!”
“No, dopey”—Frankie smacks him—“she was the safe house!”
“I don’t understand,” I wail.
“She got clean away on the bus,” fat Anita says.
“They’re gonna catch her up by Union Turnpike,” Melissa—eyes like saucers—informs us. “I heard them yellin’ when they got in the car.”
I say, “How about the two guys next door who are dealing the drugs?”
“They no drug dealers, man,” Abel says like I’m stupid, “they two gay guys.”
I look down the boulevard. There’s no traffic on the Belt. She could be in south Jersey by now. She probably is. All of a sudden the sun falls onto the roof of Don Peppe’s restaurant and at the same time Mikey lets his racing pigeons fly off. They circle over our heads and then out over Kennedy airport. It’s a beautiful sight.
I wonder if Bruno is going to like Florida.
Let me put it to you this way, if it was just Angelina, maybe I’d tell. But Angelina and Bruno? Hey. Bona fortuna.