The Winter After This Summer Page 9

  My father approved of this, and while that made me wary and apprehensive at first, I soon discovered that he was completely under Ben’s spell. He subscribed to the Maartenskill paper and the Catskill Mountain News and followed Ben’s football career with fanatic interest. Where I had once been the one to talk about Ben to him he now talked about Ben to me, pointing out the good example being offered me and asking, with sardonic emphasis, when I might start following it. And he encouraged Margaret’s relationship with Ben with the kind of fatherly vulgarisms and leers and heavy winks that made her flinch and made me suffer for her. She and Ben wrote each other regularly, although what they found to say to each other in their letters is still a mystery to me. She was an honor student in her first year of college at this time, and he was not yet out of high school, but Ben had his own form of sophistication, and when he visited us in the city now and then to take Margaret on dates I could see that he looked far older and harder and wiser—and certainly more attractive—than the callow college youths of Margaret’s acquaintance who occasionally sat at our table. And when he was in New York he stayed at the Plaza and drove his father’s Cadillac, which, I suppose, were no mean scores in his favor from Margaret’s point of view. As for his point of view, well, Margaret was tall and good-looking and had an ample figure, she was a New York girl, a college girl, and her father and uncle had much to offer. When I first met Ben he had talked of some day going to agricultural school. After he came to know my father and my uncle Charles he had not talked about that any longer. He was already scenting a different future for himself.

  I learned about his plans one late summer afternoon, a few weeks after he graduated from high school. We had been digging postholes for an electrified fence that would run around the main pasture when he suddenly said to me, “I want to talk to you. Come on, let’s take a boat out on the river and get some air. We can finish this tomorrow.”

  So we took the boat out and the usual bottle of white wine, and I, dazed and marveling at the honor being paid me, learned how easily white wine goes down and how easily it is sweated out in a Hudson Valley sun. The sunlight glittered on the water and seared through me, and Ben, already burned dark brown, pulled off his clothes and stretched out full-length in the bow of the boat, hands clasped behind his head, eyes closed against the glare. His body looked as if it had been carved out of mahogany, and I thought—embarrassed by my own thought and by the sight of those naked loins from which I tried to keep my eyes averted—that if Mia was Lorna Doone, Ben was Apollo. That is what I thought, poet and peasant that I was in my sixteenth year. And I paddled idly, using one oar as a paddle, Indian fashion, as Ben knew how to do so well. And waited for Apollo to confide in me.

  He said, “You never fool around with Mia, do you?”

  I started, almost lost the oar, and recovered it. When I looked at Ben I saw that he had not opened his eyes. He still lay placid as a god who knew the truth but wanted mortal confirmation of it. “Jesus, no,” I said.

  “I thought not. And you had plenty of chances, too, hanging around the way you do. A lot of other guys—you know what I mean?—they would have tried something rough with her a long time ago. But you’re a good kid. Here, give me the wine.”

  I gave him the bottle, a libation to the gods, and he took a long drink. “That’s why I want to talk to you about her,” he said. “When she’s away in school she’s no worry; those Sisters watch the girls there like a hawk. But when she’s around here it’s different. Maybe you don’t know it, but I keep an eye on her all the time. And if it’s not me it’s Aldo or one of the other kids. Anyhow, she knows about it, which is the important thing. She knows if we ever catch some guy trying something with her we’d kill him. She’s the kind of girl—what’s the matter, don’t you know what I’m talking about?”

  His eyes were open now, fixed on me inquiringly. I said uneasily, “Yes, but I don’t know why you’re telling me about it. What’s it got to do with me? Jesus, I like Mia. I wouldn’t try to get funny with her.”

  “That’s why I’m telling it to you. Because I’m going away, and I want to know there’s somebody around here who can take over for me. Aldo’s no good that way. He’s all right, but when you get right down to it he’s a pretty dopey kid himself. Got his head all full of nooky right now, so he don’t even know what’s going on. But you’re different. She wants to go to the movies or the soda parlor or a dance someplace, you’re the one I want her to go with. And if anybody gets fresh with her you can just scare him off or beat the hell out of him or whatever you want. And you’ve got a lot of Gennaros to help you if you need them. Not that I figure you’ll need them. You’ve got quite a name around town for being a dangerous character when you get sore.”

  I said wonderingly, “Did you ask Mia about this? Suppose she says no?”

  Ben smiled. “She’ll say whatever I tell her to say. She’ll do whatever I tell her to do.”

  “All right,” I said, “if she won’t mind—”

  “She won’t mind.” Ben propped himself up on one elbow and leaned toward me. “Look,” he said seriously, “maybe you think this is making something out of nothing, Danny, but that’s because you don’t know how it is with us. I don’t even mean all Italians either, because there’s plenty of them nowadays don’t give a damn. All I mean is the Gennaros. What we know is there’s two kinds of girls—the kind you give it to and the kind you don’t—and we know what kind we want in the family. What the hell, you’re gonna get married some day yourself. You expect to marry somebody that’s had it before you even get near her?”

  “No,” I said fervently, and only hoped that the picture of Mia in my mind wouldn’t show through my eyes.

  “So you see what I mean?”

  “Yes. But what’s all this about your going away? When you’ll be away at college Mia’ll be in school, too, won’t she?”

  “I mean that when she’s home I won’t be around any more. I’m not going to college yet. I enlisted in the Air Force day after I got out of school. Next week I’ll be off bucking for officer somewhere.”

  “But there’s a lot of colleges that want you.”

  “Fifteen. I’ve got fourteen places waiting to give me a football scholarship, and the old man’s willing to pay my way, too, if that’s what I want. But I don’t. I’ve got everything all figured out. First the Air Force, and when I get out I’ll know I won’t be pulled out of school or a job maybe and then have to serve my time when I don’t want to. After that, college, and then two, maybe three years of professional ball. I’ve already got an agent lined up to handle my football deals. He told me that if I can make a name in college I can wind up with twenty, thirty thousand after taxes for just a couple of years in pro ball, and that’s good enough for me. After that—well, your uncle Charlie and your father have been saying something about the kind of job they had waiting if I turn down the other scholarship deals and go to the University. The University’s not much on football scholarships—if I went out West I could get twice what they offered—but this new coach they have, Detzendorf, and the big man in the alumni association both told me they can work out something special if I sign up there now for admission after I get out of the military.

  “That’s the way everything’s lined up, Danny. But what it means is that I’ll be a long ways off just when all the guys around here will be getting Mia in their sights. That’s what I’m counting on you for. You’re a nice clean kid, you’re like one of the family. If I know you’re watching out for Mia, then I can rest easy wherever I am. All right?”

  “All right.”

  Ben sat up straight and pointed his finger at me. “And swear you’ll never fool around with her yourself. Swear to God.”

  I took a deep breath. “I swear to God.”

  “Oh hell, you’re a Protestant, aren’t you? Well, swear to God as a good Protestant you’ll never fool around with her.”

  “I swear to God as a good Protestant,” I said with passionate conviction, “I’ll
never fool around with her.”

  Ben held out the wine bottle. “We’ll have a drink on that, Danny. I only wish Aldo was half the man you are.”

  I paddled the boat back to shore at flaming sunset, drunk with wine and glory.

  EIGHT

  So I took my oath, and I saw Ben off to the Air Force, and I broke my oath, all within one week. A week of relentless heat as July moved into August, the long days on fire under the swollen sun, the nights silver under a moon growing to fullness, and electric storms flickering with remote menace on the ridges of the Catskills far to the west. That week the Gennaro houses filled with visitors—kinfolk and friends from the Hudson Valley, the Genessee Valley, the Susquehanna Valley—all come to pay homage to the departing warrior, all speaking Italian or hard-boiled English or a mixture of Italian and hard-boiled English, eating and drinking ferociously, sitting in circles on the lawns or outside the stables and barns and picking up news of what had happened to this Gennaro or that Di Vincenzo or the other Romano since they had met at the last christening or wedding or funeral. It would be hand-shaking and back-slapping and “Come sta?” and “Che novitá?” and then they would be off talking at a speed I couldn’t follow, although I had picked up enough Italian not to make a fool of myself during introductions.

  It culminated the day Ben left, with a banquet for him at the one good restaurant in Maartenskill, the room turned inside out to make it properly festive, the air racketing with noise and thick as a syrup with tobacco smoke and the smell of food and wine, and more wine, the wine pouring undammed, the Barbera, the Suavi, the Chianti, the Barolo leaping and splashing fountain-like into the good solid tumblers waiting for them, no half-measures here, no fussy, fragile glassware unable to stand the clashing and clinking of toasts, but honest glasses that allowed a good grip and a bellyful of wine for your trouble. So I drank my bellyful and smoked my first cigar, pleased to find that it agreed with me or I with it, and watched Mia and Ben, who sat side by side at the main table next to their father and mother. Watched with the pride of possession and the fire of responsibility and the anguish of love and a pint or more of wine burning in me until the old man who had the place next to me, an ancient uncle with drooping white mustaches and a leathery, kindly face, and a hand the size and color and texture of a well-worn baseball glove, patted my shoulder consolingly and said, “Ah, la povera mama, la povera mama.”

  I saw that he meant Mrs. Gennaro, who sat passively next to Ben not speaking, just looking at him, her eyes lustrous in her face, which was like a doll’s face sunk into a round blob of fresh dough. “Ah, la mama,” the old man said to me, his own eyes lustrous with tears, his mustache twitching with emotion, “ma i gran dolori sono muti. Sono muti,” and then cried openly, the tears running down his cheeks, his head moving up and down in contemplation of his own deep and touching philosophy. I was close to crying myself. Through the haze that seemed to have settled on my brain I pieced together enough Italian to know that I had been told that great sorrows are silent, and I felt that one of the hidden truths of the universe had been shown me, I had been given words to live by. I boldly raised my glass to the old man—it was my first bold gesture in that company—and everyone else around me joined in the toast, the shouting and laughter and loud tears I was part of not contradicting in the least, as far as I was concerned, the beauty of the philosophy just offered me.

  Then Ben left, moving through the crowd easily, shaking hands, kissing, clapping backs with the best of them, saying only a word here and there until he came to me. “Remember what we talked about, Danny,” he said, his mouth close to my ear, “I told Mia all about it”; and I said, “Sure, Ben,” man to man, and so I had the signal honor of conversation with him before he was gone. We all stood on the sidewalk to watch as he got behind the wheel of the Cadillac, his father climbing in beside him to drive the car back from Albany, the heat waves shimmering in the street, rippling up steadily from the tarred road that was soft underfoot, as I discovered when I pressed a toe into it to test it. I looked at the dimple in the tar and thought, that scar will harden there; it will mark the moment that I donned the mantle of Ben Gennaro, and I swayed a little as I squared my shoulders, the better to bear my burden.

  Aldo planted a hand against my back to steady me. “What’s the matter with you?” he said.

  I looked at him, poor Aldo who had been found wanting, poor Aldo who had been dispossessed. “I gran dolori sono muti,” I told him, and he said, “Ahh, you’re drunk.”

  “I’m drunk on the wines of paradise,” I explained to him.

  “You’re drunk on vino. And don’t start anything here,” he said warningly, “not in front of everybody. Come on in and have some espresso. That’ll rinse you out. You don’t want to miss the dancing, do you?”

  He fed me corrosive espresso in the kitchen of the restaurant. From the dining room came the sounds of tables and chairs being stacked against the walls, the bellow of music from a phonograph. The dance was starting, the tribal dance of the Gennaros. The end of a pageant that I could see clearly in my head when I closed my eyes to view it.

  “Now what?” said Aldo.

  “It’s a pageant,” I said. “It’s history. First the Indians, the lance-bearers, leaping and shouting. Then the patroons, big-assed, with clay pipes in their mouths, stomping in a circle around their money bags. Then the Egans. And then the Gennaros, raising their arms to the sun, worshiping the giver of crops. All of them, one after the other, dance in Maartenskill beside the Hudson, which flows because Little Tomahawk unplugged the rock and freed it. All history is in Maartenskill,” I said, and my voice broke with the wonder of it. “We are all part of history.”

  The chef who had given me the coffee looked at Aldo. “What’s the matter with that one?” he said.

  “Egli ha un mal di capo,” said Aldo, poor unworthy Aldo.

  “Crap on that,” said the chef. “He got no headache, he’s pissed to the ears. And you better not let your mama see him like that.”

  The chef was soft and plump, an ox for the slaughter. I moved toward him sorrowfully, having had burned deep into me a proper respect for my elders, almost ashamed for what I must now do. But Aldo threw his arms around me and locked me in a deathly embrace. I tried to heave him off, but he clung to me and we floundered around the kitchen, the cook and his helpers gaping at us and moving back far out of the way.

  “You crazy bastard,” Aldo said to me. “I got my girl out there waiting, and all those wolves out there, and you have to start something. I wish Ben was here.”

  I had the vision of Mia out there with all the wolves. “All right,” I said to Aldo. “Let go, will you?”

  “Will you behave?”

  “I’ll behave. Now let go!”

  So he released me, and we went out to the dance floor, a little disheveled, a little out of breath, but serene of face. Aldo’s girl—a sleepy-eyed, gum-chewing Amazon named Phyllis—was waiting for him near the kitchen door, dancing patiently by herself, fingers snapping, feet beating out a jitterbug in time with an invisible partner, and as soon as she saw Aldo she danced up and bore him off without missing a beat. But there was no one to bear me off. Mia was far away in the center of the floor, and all I could do was stand and watch like a giddy and glowering Tybalt.

  The older people had left; the young had taken over, and they filled the floor. They danced as if the music worried them. With, somber faces they moved quickly and easily far from their partners, touching hands now and then only to identify them. The jitterbug is like that; it is not so much a dance as a ritual. But it seemed to me, as I watched Mia, that she was giving it something extra that it didn’t require. Among those stolid faces hers was flushed and laughing. When she turned, her skirt whirled too high, the pale flesh above the tan of her thighs brazenly revealed. One strap of her gown kept slipping down, and she would replace it halfheartedly so that it would soon slip down again, and more pale flesh would show, this above the bodice of her dress. She looked aban
doned, and I glowered at her for it, hoping she would see me and take notice.

  She did. Between a break in numbers she pushed her way through the crowd to me. “What’s the matter?” she said. “You look mad at the whole world.”

  “Who does?”

  “You do. And you keep looking at me the way Ben does when he watches me dancing. Don’t do it. I don’t like it.”

  Suddenly I was no longer Tybalt, I was the abject Romeo. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, don’t be sorry and don’t do it. And Ben told me all about what he said to you, and I don’t like that either. You two think you’re so smart, the way you fixed things up between you. The both of you. What do you think I am, some kind of baby?”

  Tybalt jostled Romeo angrily. “But it’s what Ben wants.”

  “But it’s what Ben wants,” Mia said, mimicking my voice. “Everything around here is always what Ben wants. I suppose if he told you to jump in the river you’d do that, too. Well, you don’t have to bother about me, if it’s not what you want.” And then in saccharine tones she said, “I’d really hate to be a bother to you.”

  It seemed to me that she was being strangely perverse and hard to follow. “What bother?” I said. “You think I wouldn’t like to take care of you?”

  “I don’t need anybody to take care of me!”

  “Well, whatever you want to call it,” I said desperately. “Honest to God, I’d like it. You know I would.”

  Suddenly Mia was all demureness, all shy, wide-eyed wonderment. “You mean that?”

  “Yes.”

  She pushed up the errant strap to her shoulder and held out her hand. “Want to dance?” she said, and I felt that I had won the right, although by what means I was unclear, to come into my own.

  Yet, for the rest of the evening she remained perverse and bewildering, full of vagrant moods, sometimes gay and flirtatious, sometimes downright sullen, as if she were daring me to respond to one mood or the other so that she could promptly change it. She gave me a hard time of it, and when at midnight Aldo came up to us with Phyllis in tow to announce that the pickup truck was outside, that he was taking a crowd of us home and we’d better get ready to go, she turned on him as well.