Saturday Night

By Dodici Azpadu

SATURDAY NIGHT follows a Sicilian-American family from 1950 to 1980. Concetta, the aging widowed matriarch of the family, adores Carmello, her son, and finds fault with Neddie, her gay daughter. Bernardo, a second son and failed boxer, is an embarrassment to Concetta. As the matriarch ages, she re-positions herself in her children’s lives. When circumstances require her to live temporarily with Carmello, she disrupts his suburban Long Island comfort, creating a fissure between him and his wife. Distance is no obstacle for Concetta’s reach. By hinting at reconciliation, she also unravels the life of her daughter and partner who live together in San Francisco, a relationship Concetta has aggressively criticized. Both Carmello and Neddie have coupled with powerful out-of-tribe women. Carmello’s wife, Justine, challenges her husband’s mindless privilege; Neddie’s partner, Linda, challenges the neurotic long-distance attachment Neddie has to Concetta. By the last page, only Concetta is unchanged by her machinations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dodici Azpadu
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476128573

Dodici Azpadu

Born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn on April Fools’ Day, Dodici Azpadu graduated from St. Joseph’s College in New York, received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and earned her PhD from Pacific Western University. Her family origins begin in the Kalso, an Arab ghetto in Palermo, Sicily. Heritage plays a significant role in the creation of her characters, gay and straight, who struggle with love, self-worth, family, and exclusion. Dodici has lived in San Francisco, Oakland, and Iowa City. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she currently lives, she teaches creative writing to community college students. She also mentors writers and poets in private workshops and tutorials. Living Room is her first novel since the publication in the United States and Great Britain of the novels Saturday Night in the Prime of Life and Goat Song. Her short stories and poems are included in several anthologies. Her poetry chapbook, Rumi’s Falcon, was published in 2005. A book of poetry, Wearing the Phantom Out, was published in 2013.

Book preview

SATURDAY NIGHT

A Novella

by

Dodici Azpadu

Neuma Books

Albuquerque NM

Copyright © 2011 by Dodici Azpadu

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a coincidence. Streets and cities are also used fictitiously.

Back cover photo by Harold Crum

Cover design by Kris Nicola • www.id-az.com

Author website • www.dodici-azpadu.com

This book is available in a print edition at most online retailers.

ISBN 978-1-4507-8396-5

SATURDAY NIGHT is a re-issue and a substantial revision of SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE PRIME OF LIFE previously published by Aunt Lute Book Company, Iowa City, Iowa 1983. ISBN 0-918040-03-7

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Works by Dodici Azpadu

Fiction

Living Room

Goat Song

saturday Night in the Prime of Life

Poetry

rumi’s falcon

SATURDAY NIGHT

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

ONE - 1975

TWO - 1952

THREE - 1962

FOUR - 1975

FIVE - 1975

SIX - 1980

SEVEN - 1980

EIGHT - 1980

NINE – 1980

PROLOGUE

On a bench in Washington Square Park, two women sat arm to arm, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. One, called Neddie, a diminutive of Benedetta, the Sicilian name she despised, was hatless. Her companion, Linda, sat with a pile of text books on her lap. They endured a December wind that forced debris against full garbage barrels and wired tree trunks. In a few weeks, 1950 would be upon them.

If it snows on us, we’ll get clitoral pneumonia, nineteen-year old Neddie said. The upturned collar of a pea-coat she slouched into left exposed black curls cut very short. Are you sure your roommate is home?

Someone always comes home, Linda, said. Her buttoned camel hair coat, matching scarf and cloche, handmade by her Nordic, mid-western mother, gave her a proper air. What’s the point of having money for your own apartment, Neddie said, if the place doesn’t buy you any privacy.

Working since high school, Neddie had not accumulated enough money to move from her parents’ home. She would never bring Linda or any outsider home to see the disapproval she faced there. If we don’t find a way to be together, Neddie said, we’ll be cranky and take it out on each other.

We will?

Neddie puffed on her cigarette to avoid smiling. She waited tables at a Greenwich Village café where she had met Linda, so knowing more than Linda about their feelings was the only edge she had on her friend. Linda was not only older by five-years and self-supporting, but soon to graduate with a master’s degree from the university she had always dreamed of attending.

Linda’s apartment near New York University housed three other women, all of whom Neddie referred to as your roommate as though there were only one. Late at night on Linda’s single bed, only a few feet from another occupied bed, they had tossed and turned unable to cool the desire they felt for each other. Neddie had never denied it. Now Linda could not deny it either.

What did you do with other girls? Linda asked.

Neddie hated to think about that because whatever petting and kissing she had managed with others felt shabby. It had been hurried and secretive. It wouldn’t be right for us, Neddie said. You’re not like that.

Believe me. I’m like that.

You want to make love standing in an alley or a doorway? Trusting that she looked like a boy with her short hair and winter clothes, Neddie looped her arm through Linda’s arm and put her ungloved hand into the pocket of Linda’s coat. Worrying about someone seeing you is not sexy. Just the opposite.

We can do it standing up?

Neddie discarded her cigarette, stalling. Do what?

Whatever it is we do.

Neddie wagged her head. You’re honesty gets me. My experience embarrasses me, but my inexperience is more shameful. For you experience and inexperience are just facts.

Answer me, Linda said. Can we do it standing?

Neddie took her hand out of Linda’s pocket and waved to show the possibility.

Come on, Linda said, standing. I know where we can go.

Chapter ONE - 1975

Carmello Zingaro, Concetta’s first son, dodged smoke and turned hamburger patties on an outdoor grill while he held the attention of three men, dressed as he was in red and white softball uniforms. When he finished speaking, the men burst into laughter, and Concetta wrapped her fleshy arms across her bosom and smiled.

Concetta thought of her son as thoroughly American despite his name, his habit of speaking with his hands, and his complexion, more brown than olive. His name was his father’s. At his birth, Concetta had not thought to argue for Carl or Charles instead of a foreign name. Sports helped him fit in with his neighbors, so did his seniority in the construction union and his marriage to a sturdy mid-western girl. Ultimately, acceptance as an American rested on Concetta’s grandchildren, more golden than olive-skinned.

Concetta was American-born, but more of her than one foot was in the old country, so her son’s cultural amnesia troubled her. She sometimes felt herself bleeding to death, not from any public wound, but from one secretly self-inflicted. This loss she blamed on unfortunate placement in the birth order of her children. Her first son had come after his sister.

As the yard filled with party guests who took turns congratulating him, Carmello did not look like a man celebrating his forty-fifth birthday. Barrel-chested and