This is when he comes—when she’s tired, when she’s weak. She’s still kneeling in the alley. The street tilts, the buildings spin, the past oozes through the cracks: here and there at the same time. At her age, there is never far.
She’d always loved his name. Richie Verona. A name for a crooner, or a movie star born to play thugs. He was almost too handsome. Black hair dark as mussel shells. The tanned, veined hands of a laborer, which he was. Hands he’d used with such gentleness at first—but that was merely an act, a pair of gloves. The hands, unsheathed, were stronger than her entire body.
Now they would call it rape, though that word wasn’t used as much when she was a girl. And she did know the boy. Considered him a friend. She had, of her own will, gone to his house.
Why does her mind always play it like this? As if she was the one who’d done something wrong. Maybe it’s the same for all women. Taught to find the fault in themselves first, before assigning blame to others.
But that’s not the point. She’s not looking to find fault. Nor to assign blame. She’s simply looking at the facts—or perhaps they’re looking at her.
Take a breath, she thinks. Take your time. Lying in the street, she has all the time in the world. She refuses to knock on one of those metal warehouse doors, degrade herself further. She’ll just wait here, let her mind wander. Who cares if the men come back? She isn’t afraid to die. She really isn’t.
In fact, it’s what she wants.
Though at the moment she’s growing younger. What was she—fifteen, sixteen? She was on the debating team, in the French club—though with Richie she played dumb. She can’t recall if she ever told him No, if she’d used that exact word.
Because that was a crucial point, wasn’t it? That word was proof of a girl’s innocence. Without it, the judges might say that her whimpers had been misinterpreted. They might say it was sometimes difficult for a man to know for certain. A woman’s moans of distress could easily be confused for moans of ecstasy, of desire.
Would they really dare to say such things?
Darling, wake up, look at the news.
But I tried to push him away, she would say in her own defense.
In some ways, she was in awe of his power. That is not to say she enjoyed it. She was—and let this be clear—terrified.
They’d gone for a walk in VanDervoort Park. The swans were out on the pond, and that had felt lucky. Sitting on two swivel stools afterward, they’d eaten ice cream. She thought Richie’s choice of rum raisin sophisticated. Later, in the car, he pulled out a silver flask. She’d taken a sip—disgusting but invigorating, like mouthwash. His parents weren’t home, he said. We could play some records.
She knew it was a line, she wasn’t stupid. She intended to kiss him. She’d even let him touch her breasts. Because she finally had them. Yes, she remembers now, she was fifteen, feeling very grown-up to have a date with an older boy. Richie was almost nineteen, not a boy at all.
The attack, the act itself, is blurry. What she recalls is this: that they were lying the wrong way on his bed, and that throughout the wrestling match she caught glimpses of the Yankees pennant pinned to Richie’s headboard. When she turned her face to the side to escape his breath, she saw that the bedroom door was open. She kept picturing his parents coming home—how they’d see her like this, and how embarrassed she’d be. Ashamed for something she had no say in.
She remembers arriving at the house—so much smaller than her own, the furnishings like things you’d expect to see lying by a curb. The table legs scratched as if by rats, and the couch cushions worn to threads. Everything, of course, was spotless. Without that, it would have been intolerable. She understands now what a snob she was.
On a shelf in Richie’s living room stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, though it looked like something you’d win at the San Gennaro Festival. Chalky plaster, badly painted. And to put it in the living room was tacky.
None of this mattered, though. Even then, she knew that beauty was a kind of wealth—and the boy, in this regard, was loaded. His beauty was certainly greater than her own. Maybe because his was effortless, unguarded, even ragged—what, ironically, in a girl might be called slovenly. He was wearing unpleated khakis, a wrinkled oxford, while she was dolled up in a gingham pinafore and a white blouse with daisies on the sleeves. This was before the era of Florence, when her mother had ruled the closet.
She’d told her parents she was meeting some girlfriends. Her parents wouldn’t have approved of Richie. And she understood that. In the long run it could never work out. A boy like that, from the sooty side of the tracks. Still, she was curious.
Richie’s house smelled of garlic. A clothesline strung up in the middle of the kitchen. Yet even as she privately turned up her nose at the boy’s native habitat, she was smiling like a fool. Not entirely phony; she was genuinely fascinated by Richie. And he did make her swoon, nearly to sickness.
As for their conversation at his house, she recalls only the inessential. How she asked for a glass of water and how he apologized for the clouds. “Air in the pipes,” he explained. When he handed her the water, it looked like a glass of milk.
Afterward, when her dress was torn and she was crying, he began to talk loudly, as if to distract her.
“Did you see the autograph?” He pointed toward the blue-and-white pennant on the headboard. “Joe DiMaggio.”
Honey’s father hated Joe DiMaggio. A fucking Sicilian, he called him.
Driving her home, Richie offered the flask again, but she refused. The whole way, she said nothing—she wasn’t even crying anymore—so she didn’t appreciate it when he told her, rather sharply, not to make a big deal of it. The quieter she was, the angrier he grew, and finally, when she was stepping from the car silent as a cat, he told her to keep her stupid mouth shut. Told her not to be a cunt about it.
It was the first time she’d ever heard that word; she thought he meant a tiny pig, a runt or something. She said a prayer before going into the house, and when she heard her parents in the kitchen she ran straight to her room. Took a bath and then a shower, surprised to find so many bruises on her body. Strangely they didn’t hurt at all, as if someone had painted them on. Or maybe she was numb.
As she was drying her hair, her mother appeared. “Where have you been? What happened?” The ruined dress was on the floor. Honey had wrapped a towel around herself, but her mother pulled it away. When she saw the bruises, she made the sign of the cross.
“Please don’t tell him,” begged Honey.
“Tell who? Your father? Do you think I’m stupid?”
They stared at each other, breathing heavily. They both knew what her father was capable of.
“Come on, get into bed.” Her mother pulled the covers over her body. “Thank God he didn’t touch your face. No one sees nothing.”
Yet somehow her father did see. Somehow he found out.
He didn’t seem upset, though. He even invited Richie to the house—and what he said to the boy shocked her: You’re going to marry my daughter, yes? A terrifying smile on the Great Pietro’s face, as he bullied the hapless couple into something neither of them wanted.
Honey remembers the drive in the Cadillac, she and Richie and her father. “We’ll have a picnic,” her father said at one point, gesturing toward some trees at the side of the road.
But when Honey looks, there are no trees. She’s back in the alley, her knee still bleeding. No cars, no breeze. Time, it seems, has stopped.
Eventually one of the metal doors creaks open and a man steps out. He’s dressed completely in white—a baker or an angel.
Honey wipes her face, adjusts her wig. When the stranger reaches for her hand, she gives it to him.
What choice does she have?