The Winter After This Summer Read online

  “I don’t want to go home in that dirty truck,” she said stormily.

  Aldo looked surprised. “It’s not dirty up front. You don’t have to get in back with the rest of them. There’s plenty of room up front for the four of us.”

  Mia surveyed Phyllis up and down. No question about it, there was a lot of Phyllis. “I wouldn’t want to crowd you,” Mia said, her lip curling. “I’d much rather walk.”

  “Well, you’re not walking any three miles on the highway this time of night,” Aldo said. “Mama told me to bring you home with me when I went home. So come on.”

  “With everybody yelling and carrying on in back like a bunch of hoodlums,” Mia said bitterly. “If Ben was here he’d understand.”

  “If Ben was here he’d give you a good boot in the tail,” Aldo said equably. “Now, are you coming, or do I call up the house and tell them what goes on here?”

  It was a tight fit in the cab of the truck. I sat tensely with Phyllis spilling over me on one side and Mia pressed against me on the other, afraid any gesture I might make would be misinterpreted. Aldo had no license to drive as yet, but the Gennaros, as local nobility, were entitled to certain privileges, as long as they did not abuse them. So I was startled to see him—while a whooping, singing crowd was piling into the back of the truck—reach down into the seat behind him and come up with a bottle of wine. “I stashed it there for an emergency,” he said. “We’ll have to kill it and toss it out on the way. If Papa finds it here he’ll hit me over the head with it.”

  He took a long drink, several deep, thirsty swallows, and passed the bottle to Phyllis who followed suit with much sputtering and choking. When Aldo pounded her on the back she yelped and then looked at him adoringly. “You’re so cute,” she said.

  Mia kept her eyes stonily ahead, her jaw set hard. It was my turn next, but I offered the bottle to her. Instead of rejecting it as I had expected her to do, she seized it, raised it to her mouth, and tilting her head far back drank steadily. When I snatched the bottle away from her in alarm, wine splashed over her, staining her dress to the waist. She gasped, and Aldo said, “Oh Jesus, now what do you tell Mama?”

  She cocked her head at him. “Don’t you worry, I’ll tell her something,” she said, and then in a high-pitched little voice, a cruel parody of Phyllis, she said, “You’re so cute to worry about it, aren’t you?”

  After that, both she and Phyllis sat stonily, eyes straight ahead, while Aldo drove, and I finished the bottle of wine and tossed it out of the car window. The only noise came from the back of the truck where the evening’s festivities were being concluded at full blast. The noise diminished little by little as Aldo made his stops along the way and couples yelling their good-byes jumped or fell or were cheerfully pushed off the truck at their destinations. When we came to the Gennaro driveway there was no more noise. And when Aldo cut off the motor, silence beat at my ears.

  “All right,” said Aldo at last, “we’re home. This is where you get off.”

  Mia did not move. “It doesn’t look like home to me. I always thought home was across the road and down that driveway.”

  “You can walk that far,” Aldo said impatiently. “Go on, Danny, shove her out of here. There’s no use trying to talk to her when she’s like this.”

  I was saved from my dilemma by Mia’s flinging open the door of the truck and jumping to the ground. I followed her and watched the truck take off in a blaze of taillights and a triumphant roar. My last view of it made clear that Phyllis, who now had all the room she needed, was not taking advantage of any of it. She was still seated half on Aldo, one arm lovingly draped around his neck.

  Mia was watching this, too. “The pig,” she said between her teeth. “The fat, stupid pig. She thinks she’s so smart.” She wheeled on me. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she isn’t. She’s just a fat pig. That’s why all the boys like her. Aldo, too. He thinks he’s the only one, but he ought to know what I know.”

  We crossed the road, the full moon turning everything around us into a black silhouette pasted against a cool white light, the crickets sawing and chirping away in a loud chorus, the world apart from them empty. When I started toward the driveway leading to the house Mia caught hold of my hand and pulled me to a standstill. “No,” she whispered, although there was no one within hearing distance of our normal voices, “let’s take a walk first.”

  Excitement stirred in me, wrapped in a faraway warning. “It’s too late.”

  “It isn’t. They’ll be in that truck for an hour yet. It’s all right as long as I get in before Aldo does.”

  Both the excitement and the warning became more urgent. “But how can you walk in those shoes?”

  “I can. You think it’s the first time I wore high heels? And I can hold on to you just in case.” She squeezed my hand painfully hard. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  I was defeated because I feverishly wanted to be. The warning hissed through my veins, but there seemed to be more wine than blood running through me. And that hand tightly clutching mine was as potent as the wine. So we walked away from the house and toward the river and the full moon. I thought we were walking aimlessly, but as we approached the barn I saw that Mia was steering me toward it. Now I understood the warning. I stopped short. “What do you want to go there for?” I said.

  “I just want to. Come on.”

  I was shocked to the core. “You think I’m crazy? You know what Ben would say?”

  She flung my hand away. “If you talk about Ben once more, I’ll scream. Ben isn’t here now, don’t you understand? Why are you always such a big baby?”

  I said angrily, “I’m not. But I’m supposed to be taking care of you, not fooling around like this. Now come on, let’s go back to the house.”

  “No, I want to go up to the hayloft and look at the river. I don’t need you to take care of me while I’m looking at scenery, do I? I can do it all right by myself. Do you think Ben would mind that?”

  She started up the gentle slope of the concrete ramp leading to the barn, and although she now had firm footing under her, she teetered as unsteadily as she had on the uneven ground. I knew then that she must have drunk as much wine that evening as I had, and for some reason this set my heart to pounding wildly. I watched her go—watched and waited to see what she would do—and then I followed her.

  The night lights in the barn made it a shadowy cavern. A few of the Gennaro cows were padlocked in their stalls, jaws slowly working on cud, eyes flashing whitely as they turned incuriously to look at me. Ascending the ladder behind Mia I thought many things, but one thought blearily overrode all the others. It was that Phyllis with her bovine eyes and splendid udders and chewing gum much more resembled a cow than a pig. Poor Aldo, I thought, poor Aldo huddled in his track with his lovelorn cow while I entered the Sacred Grove with Mia. The thought alarmed me. I hesitated on the ladder, swaying dizzily as I clung to it, the same retching in belly and throat possessing me as it had the day I had murdered the chicken. And why should that memory come to me now, I wondered. Was it a warning along with all the others clamoring at me?

  “Good-bye,” said Mia. She looked down at me, her face framed in the trapdoor of the hayloft. “Good-bye,” she said mockingly, and disappeared. The emptiness above beckoned me. I ascended to it, a vomitous mortal pursuing an angel, an innocent satyr pursuing a nymph, a terrified schoolboy wondering what comes now.

  The haying doors at the end of the loft were wide open, the moonlight flooding through them, and Mia stood there looking out into it, her hand resting lightly on the block and tackle of the hay-lift. When I came up to her she continued to look at the river in the distance, but she said, her voice still mocking, “Hello, where’ve you been?”

  “You know where I’ve been. Now let’s get out of here. You’ve seen enough, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t. I want to watch that train. It’s going to New York, isn’t it?”
r />   “I guess so.”

  “I wish I was on it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be on it right now?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re so stupid sometimes. Because it’s going to New York, that’s why.”

  I said from the heart, “Well, what’s so wonderful about New York? It’s a lot better here.”

  “It is not. It isn’t any better than St. Cecilia’s, and it’s rotten there. It’s like a jail. You can never do anything.”

  “Do they watch you all the time?”

  Mia made a strangling noise in her throat. “They’re like a bunch of policemen, the miserable old things. They’re hateful.” Then she said slowly and meaningfully, “But there’s one time they can’t watch us. They can’t go riding, and we can. It’s enough to make them spit, but there isn’t a thing they can do about it. It’s a regular part of physical education, and the monsignor said it was perfectly all right.”

  “You mean horseback riding?”

  “What did you think I meant? And there’s the cutest instructor. The girls are all crazy about him.”

  I felt a searing jealousy. “Well, they shouldn’t be.”

  “Why not?” Mia said, and looked at me out of the corners of her eyes. “Anyhow, I’m not. I just think he’s cute. I like you a lot better than I like him.”

  “Honest to God?”

  “Honest to God.” She reached out and marked a cross on my chest, and my skin prickled under her touch. “Do you like me better than anybody else?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Her hand still rested on my chest. She placed the other hand there, too, and moved closer to me, her hands, from the feel of them, simultaneously fending me off and drawing me close. “Do you love me?” she said.

  “A prima vista.”

  The hands suddenly repelled me; the lovely face darkened. “Don’t talk wop to me! I can talk English as good as anybody!”

  I said in astonishment, “I didn’t mean anything. It just sounds so pretty that way.”

  “It doesn’t. It sounds like them, the way they talk. Always talking like that, and yelling, and being pigs!”

  “Who?” I said in bewilderment.

  “You ought to know who, you were at the party. Didn’t you hear them? Didn’t you hear the way they sounded? And the way they looked like a bunch of paisans? Why can’t they be like other people?”

  I said in protest, “What are you getting so excited about? They’re your family. And they’re nice, too. I thought they were very nice.”

  “You’re only saying it. Because you’re the one that’s nice! Yes you are, otherwise you wouldn’t even look at them. I mean that!” she said passionately when I started to shake my head in contradiction. “You’re different from them. You talk different and you even look different. So you don’t have to talk like them to me. You’re different!”

  I was willing to be convinced. More than willing when her fingers pulled at my shirt so that we were very close together. “Now tell me you love me again,” she demanded. “Tell it to me right.”

  “I love you! Jesus, how I love you!”

  “I know, I know!” And then her mouth was hard against mine, her arms locked painfully tight around my neck, my arms around her waist, and we stood swaying as we kissed furiously, endlessly, more like two wrestlers straining for a hold than lovers, and winding up like wrestlers on the carpeting of hay beneath us, sprawling over each other clumsily, trying to devour each other.

  I could have kept it up for an eternity, I thought, but Mia pushed me away and rolled over on her back gasping, her arms limp at her sides, her eyes open and staring at the rafters overhead. It was over, I thought, regretting it, yet glad of it while the shadow of Ben lay over me. I had done enough damage. I was lucky not to have done more.

  Yet it was hard to keep my eyes off the swell of those small breasts, that narrow waist, that disordered skirt pulled alarmingly high. Surely my eyes could do no harm. Then I saw that Mia was watching me, and I said hastily, “I guess you’ll never get the wine out of that dress. What are you going to tell your mother?”

  “I’ll tell her something.” Mia reached out and caught hold of my hair. She tugged at it. “I’ll tell her I was baptized all over again.”

  “Baptized,” I said, and the music of her name sang in the air. “Mia. Marianna Lucia Gennaro.”

  “No, it’s just Marian.”

  “Ben said it was Marianna.”

  “Its Marian now. It’s my name, isn’t it? I guess I can do what I want with it.”

  “I guess. Anyhow, I like Mia best. Mia. Mia. Mia.”

  She laughed. “You sound like a sick cat.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. But I don’t care.” She rolled over on her side to face me, her fingers still tightly knotted in my hair. “I don’t care because I love you. That’s how it is when you love somebody.” She drew my head toward her until my face was almost against her chest, my nose drawing in the fumes of heated flesh, of perfume, of wine. She moved her free arm, and the strap of the dress and the bodice of it magically slid downward. I knew it was not I but someone else whose lips touched the soft round breast that lay revealed to him, touched it, then drew back in terror.

  “It’s all right,” Mia said in my ear. “Kiss me there. It’s all right,” and I kissed her there, bolder and bolder, until both breasts lay bare, fair game for the hunter, and Mia’s breath quickened in my ear, and we entered our struggle again, but this time seeking the answers to the real questions, the big ones and the little ones, all the questions that could only be answered by hands and lips and sword and scabbard.

  For one instant in that time, in that search, in that inquiry we stood at a crossroads. Mia whispered, “Danny, I never did this before.” “Yes,” I said, “I know,” and she said, “Never in my whole life,” and for that instant we were motionless, knowing that we stood where you must return now or never return at all, and the next instant we cast the die, drove home the lesson, sealed the deal, as healthy and inept a pair of virgins as ever were locked together on a hayloft floor, pushing and panting, making a botch of it but unable to stop, straining for release until release came explosively, and exhaustion, nerveless, dismaying, inevitable, moved in to smother everything else under it.

  But I learned, I learned. I learned that there is no swooning, no loss of the senses, but a sharpening of them, a fulfillment of them. And I learned the wonder of a face, the beauty of it, as with eyelids tightly shut and nostrils flaring and lips drawn away from clenched teeth, it fears and wonders and rejoices. And I learned that in a single moment a man can become as much as his father, because he can say I know and mean it.

  Yet all the learning was nothing compared to the terror as we lay apart. We knew that all we had left was each other, and it was not enough. Mia cried—she had not cried before this although she had reason to—and said, “We shouldn’t have done it,” and I could not dispute that. But when she said, “You think I’m dirty now, don’t you? You think I’m no good,” I could dispute it, and did.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said piteously. “Now you think I’m like that pig, Phyllis. You can’t love me any more. You can’t love any girl like me.”

  “I can! I do! I swear I do.”

  She shook her head violently from side to side. “You don’t. I know how it is.”

  So I pleaded with her, not daring to touch her, but whispering my plea into her ear until she looked at me, her eyes wide, the tear-stained tracks of mascara beneath them like crayoned lines, and said, “Do you mean it?”

  “You know I do.”

  “And we’re going to get married, aren’t we, so it’ll be all right. I don’t mean right away, I mean later on. And it’ll be all right about telling it at confession, too. I don’t have to do it here; I can wait until I’m in Kingston sometime.”

  I felt a constriction in my chest. “Do you have to tell about it at confession?”

  “It’s a sin, Danny. It’s t
he worst sin.”

  “I know.”

  “But I’ll go to church in Kingston where they don’t know me, so it’ll be all right. Only we mustn’t ever do it any more. Not until—you know when.”

  The pressure on my chest had all the Weight and power of Ben Gennaro behind it. “Until we’re married,” I said, but even that didn’t seem to relieve it.

  “Until we’re married. We mustn’t do it any more until then. Not ever.”

  Not ever is a long time. Much longer than the few months that led to Thanksgiving Day that autumn when the whole world conspired against us to make us give thanks for our bounties in our own unwilling and frantic way.

  I did not intend to go to Maartenskill that holiday week end. Ben had written me that he would be home on furlough then and looked forward to seeing me, and I was stricken by the feeling that when he took one look at me he would know what had happened. I even wondered if I could resist telling him what had happened. I was in a bad state then, bursting with the arrogance of my new-found manhood, sickened by the knowledge that I had obtained that manhood by fraud, I had won it by betrayal. And Mia did not make matters easier in the letters she wrote me. Letters written in red ink on gray paper and saturated with some high-powered scent so that my whole room was flooded with the heady perfume of it when I opened the envelopes. Letters which were at first addressed to Dearest Danny then to Danny Dearest and finally to Dearest Darling and which set forth with innumerable misspellings the dormitory gossip of St. Cecilia’s, invective against the unfeeling Sisters there, reports on the movie idols seen at last Saturday’s matinée, and such unabashed declarations of love and devotion for me that I was overwhelmed by them. I had the feeling of dealing with a stranger, someone I did not really know at all who had delivered herself into my hands. I wrote to her in kind, but always with the feeling that all this was unreal, that I was playing some sort of game which Ben Gennaro would cruelly bring to an end when the time came. It was not hard to write those letters. Certainly, I thought, not as hard as seeing Mia face to face, being close to her, so that my guilt would be there alive and breathing before me.