My dad made me bring one of my new books, so I took The Old Man and the Sea. I tried reading it the other night but I just couldn’t get into it so I was really hoping he wouldn’t bug me about it once we got to Svenska’s and maybe he’d forget that he made me bring a book, but it rained all day that Saturday, so we couldn’t go to the beach, and Svenska didn’t want to play gin rummy with me like she usually does so instead she asks my dad if I had anything to read.
“Yeah, he’s got a book to read,” he says. “Go on, grab your book and get some reading done.”
I guess I gave an eye roll and Svenska caught it.
“Don’t roll your eyes at your father, young man, or you’ll find a foot up your ass,” Svenska says.
She was in a bad mood. It was probably because of the rain but that’s no excuse to just snap like that especially when I didn’t roll my eyes at her, I rolled them at my dad and even though my dad is her grandson he doesn’t need her to protect him anymore. I’m sure she could tell she hurt my feelings because I’m not good at hiding stuff like that. “You’ve got a hell of a poker face kid,” is what my dad always says because anytime I get upset or embarrassed I blush. This can be a real problem in school when the nuns yell at you or make fun of you for not knowing the answer to a question and then tell the class that this one doesn’t care to use the brain that God gave him. When that happens I turn as red as a tomato which then lets all the kids in class know that you’re ashamed and that gives them ammunition to rag on you during recess and then next thing you know you’re getting into a fight in the lunch room because what else are you going to do when the whole class starts laughing at you for blushing like a tomato and you end up throwing a punch because you’ve got to protect your honor, don’t you.
Anyway, I grabbed my book and sat down on this peely-paint rocking chair Svenska had by the window, but instead of reading I just rocked back and forth watching the rain.
“Stop playing the injured puppy, will ya?” my father said when he saw me sulking.
“No. No. He’s got every right,” Svenska said to him. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, but every bit of me aches on a rainy day, including my mood.” She then moved from the kitchen to sit on the porch.
In the past, if we had a rainy day in Rockaway, when me and Tommy were little, Svenska woulda asked us to sit with her if she went out on the porch. We’d sway back and forth on the swinging bench and watch the rain fall while she told her stories about the love of her life, her crazy husband, Eddie Fitz, who only had eyes for her. When Svenska talks about Eddie she can also get the sad look in her eyes, and I realize nobody in my family can hide their feelings. Maybe this is where my poker face comes from.
“But he died too young,” she says. “Like too many young men. Gone too soon. But it wasn’t the booze that got him. No. It was the goddamn dust from cutting those stones every day is what killed him. Choked the life out of him.”
That’s the same thing Pop McSweeney said would be the death of him, and it was, so I’ve already decided I’m not going to do any work that involves cutting stones or breaking rocks when I grow up.
My dad adds, “Eddie worked under the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge and every time I go over the bridge, I think about that time he took me into work with him. If you ever needed an excuse to hit the books, it was watching Eddie Fitz cut stone.”
My dad does that a lot. When we drive down the highway and guys are working on the road laying tar on a steamy summer day or we’re on a bus in the city and guys are out in the freezing cold collecting garbage or we’re eating in a diner and guys are cooking over a hot stove getting yelled at by the old guy that owns the joint, he says the same thing. “You see that guy there? You think he wishes he didn’t cut class so often?”
Not only was Svenska in a bad mood but my dad was moody and gloomy too, but it had nothing to do with the rain and being old and achy. It’s because my mom decided not to come with us that weekend. She said she had too much work around the house, and it was too damn hot in that bungalow with everybody sleeping in one room.
“That never bothered you before,” my dad said to her.
She ignored that.
“Tommy doesn’t want to go either. I’ll stay home to keep an eye on him,” she said. “You two have a grand time. Go listen to all the old stories you love so much.”
She said that in a way that makes me think she doesn’t like the old stories and I could tell that hurt my dad’s feelings, but he would never show it.
Anyhow, Svenska doesn’t invite me to sit out on the porch with her, so I stop rocking back and forth and finally pick up my book and I have to admit, it wasn’t half bad. It’s about this old guy, Santiago, and this kid who used to fish with him, but the old guy hasn’t caught a fish in a long time and the kid’s parents make him work on some other guy’s boat and now the kid can only help the old man when he comes back from fishing or in the morning before he heads out. I can tell why my mom thought I would like it because even though it takes place in Cuba, it’s about fishing, which I like, and they’re Catholic, like us, with pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the wall, which we have in my parents’ bedroom, and the old man loves the Yankees and Joe DiMaggio, like everybody else on the planet.