A Decent Girl Always Goes to Mass on Sunday

By Rocco Fumento

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2002
• ISBN: 9781465328717

Rocco Fumento

Rocco Fumento, Professor Emeritus in English-Film of the University of Illinois, was born in North Adams, Massachusetts. He has published two previous novels: DEVIL BY THE TAIL (McGraw-Hill, 1953) and TREE OF DARK REFLECTION (Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). His short stories and his articles on film have appeared in various magazines. Fumento currently resides with his wife in Dalton, Massachusetts, twenty miles from his birthplace.

Book preview

A DECENT GIRL

ALWAYS GOES

TO MASS

ON SUNDAY

Rocco Fumento

Copyright © 2002 by Rocco Fumento.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

For my sons David, Michael, Andrew and Matthew

Satan, at the opening of the Book of Job, answers God’s "Whence comest

thou? with: From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and

down in it."

Letters pertaining to the projected publication some years ago of Angela

is for Angel, the original title of A Decent Girl Always Goes to Mass on

Sunday.

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CHAPTER ONE

Most everybody calls me Angie except my mother and father and my Aunt Clara and they call me Angelina because they come from the old country. Honest to God I hate both names. My real name is Angela and that’s a beautiful name, I think. Angela is for angel, is what I used to say when I was a little girl, meaning that’s what it is in English. What’s your name? somebody would ask me, and I’d say Angela, as clear as a bell. And Angela is for angel, I’d say, but they always ended up calling me Angie and I suppose that’s the name I’m stuck with for life. Only Father LaParrone ever calls me Angela and he doesn’t really count. I mean he’s not a relative or even a friend, but he’s a nice guy anyway and when he says Angela, whispering it like a prayer in that sexy voice he’s got, I could just kiss him no matter if he is a priest and all that. I always go to confession to him because he doesn’t give me hell all the time or a big penance as Father Morelli does, who gives everybody the rosary or the stations of the cross if you so much as sneeze in his direction.

My best friend is Rosie Cifretta. She hates Rosie and wants me to call her Rose, but she always forgets and calls me Angie and so I call her Rosie. She lives downstairs from us on Chestnut Street and her father owns the house. They’ve got some money—not much, but more than us anyway. My mother says her father sold bathtub gin during prohibition and that’s how they made their money. I don’t care how they made it; I wish we had some too. For instance, Rosie finished high school but I had to go to work at sixteen. I don’t really care because with me school was always a grind and anyway I was only beginning second year high when I quit, having stayed back a couple of years. But still I would have liked to graduate and be in the senior class play and have my picture in the class book and go to the senior prom in an evening gown and wearing a gardenia like Rosie did. But my Aunt Clara—she’s an old maid and lives with us—got me a job in the shoe factory. I like Rosie because even if she finished high school, as well as taking night courses at Brewster’s Business College, she’s not the least bit stuck up. She works in the shoe factory like me, but in the office because she learned shorthand and all that jazz, which I admire her for doing and is more than I could ever hope to do. Rosie’s smart all right, but she doesn’t put on airs with me and that’s why I like her. I just can’t stand people who are always putting on airs and who have the insane notion they are better than you are.

I’m an odd shoe girl. I mean that’s what they call my job in the shop. You see, what I do is I handle the rush jobs, shoes that have to be pushed through fast like samples or special orders or, for instance, if one shoe is ruined by an assembler or a laster then I have to put through another shoe just like it so that we’ll have a matching pair again. I’m on day work instead of piece work and so I don’t make much money. But anyway I like my job because I get to wander all over the shop and I don’t get bored and a blister on my fanny sitting in one place all day and doing the same damn thing day in and day out, like my Aunt Clara. Besides, some of those people on piece work are so awfully money hungry that all they do is race all day long to make ten cents more than the next person and don’t even take time out to go to the bathroom or have a coke. In my job you don’t have to worry about somebody making more money than you and racing and that’s another reason I like it. I’ve got this rack that I put my odd shoes on and I push it to the service elevator and go up to the lasting room on the second floor or the cutting room on the third floor or the basement or right in the finishing room on the first floor, where I punch the clock every morning. Then, while one of the cutters or assemblers or somebody else is working on my odd shoes, I get to talk to them. I like to be friendly and I like to talk to everybody and everybody thinks the world of me. No, that’s not exactly the God’s honest truth. Some of the girls don’t like me, but honest to God all the fellas do and as far as I’m concerned that’s what counts. Anyway, the girls are worse than the men when it comes to being money hungry and I figure that’s why some can’t even stop a minute to have a decent word with me and besides they can’t stand my nice build.

I can’t get over how simple-minded I was when I first started working in the shop. I turned sixteen on November 21st and that’s the exact day I started working, and by then I already had my nice build. I started getting chesty when I was thirteen and at first I used to be embarrassed about it and walked with my shoulders stooped, like I was carrying a ton of bricks on my back, just so they wouldn’t stick out so much. Now how come you go around like that hunchback Mariuccia? My Aunt Clara asked me once. I could feel myself blushing all colors of the rainbow but finally confessed how I was ashamed because I was getting so big on top. You ought to thank God you got such nice breasts and not be ashamed of them, Aunt Clara said.

I didn’t know what Aunt Clara meant, but by the time I was sixteen I learned that all the skinny girls sure were jealous because I had so much and they had so little and it was then I decided to straighten myself out and be proud of them for a change. I even took to standing naked in front of the mirror and thanking God, like Aunt Clara said I should, that I had such nice firm breasts which didn’t sag in the least, unlike some girls I know who need all the support they can get or maybe a couple of inches of padding or both.

You wouldn’t believe how bashful I was before going to work in the shoe shop. You know, I was in high school and a fella never even kissed me on the lips, no matter if I had a bona fide date with him or was playing post office. Not that they didn’t try, but I didn’t know the first thing about sex and things like that and so naturally I was scared, not to mention being religious. Why I was the type who never even said damn, if you know what I mean. A lady shouldn’t swear, is what Rosie has always said, and I couldn’t agree with her more and even after being exposed to the worst sort of language, such as the kind you hear in the shoe shop, I hardly ever said more than damn for the longest while and you can’t really call that swearing. The same goes for dirty jokes, which I never did like. But if I was within hearing distance of a dirty joke I used to blush in my usual fashion even it I didn’t half understand it ninety-nine times out of a hundred. After a year or so in the shop I didn’t blush nearly as much and if sometimes I still didn’t understand a joke all the way I laughed just like everybody else and made believe I enjoyed it because I certainly didn’t want them thinking I was still that simple-minded kid of sixteen.

But that first day I was bashful and scared as hell and that’s the God’s honest truth. There I was pushing that rack around and not even sure what I was supposed to be doing with all them shoes and the fellas kept eyeing me up and down, like maybe I just stepped out of a bathtub, and they kept giving me these wolf whistles and making such cracks as, You can put your shoes under my bed anytime, honey, and calling me sweater girl and asking me where I got my fifty-thousand-dollar treasure chest. I have to admit my sweater was kind of tight because it shrank when I washed it, but even if it shrank I liked to wear that sweater because it was blue, which happens to be my favorite color, and because I was just starting to be proud of my breasts. But the way those fellas were going ape over them I began to feel as it they were undressing me right then and there and so I started walking hunchbacked again and when I got home I stuffed it in the garbage can and cried for two hours straight because I was so crazy about that sweater.

Those damn fellas made me so nervous on my very first day that I got all those odd shoes mixed up and Jenny, this Polack girl from South Wakely who was leaving the job because she was going to have a baby any minute and who was supposed to be showing me what to do but was too busy complaining about her varicose veins and about how her husband was mad because she was going to have a baby and so couldn’t work anymore or have any sex for a couple of months, this Jenny gives me hell and tells me I should keep my mind on my work and not flirt with all the fellas or I’d be out on my ass before I ever so much as laid eyes on my first paycheck. Yes, that’s exactly what she said, but she was one of those crude Polacks from South Wakely and so I suppose she just didn’t know better, but it made me feel bad anyway because anyone in their right mind could plainly see I wasn’t flirting with those fellas.

This Mary Molina, who is a perfect doll, saw how the fellas were making me miserable and heard what that awful Jenny said and when Jenny trotted downstairs for a candy bar she said, Come to the ladies’ room with me. All day long that Jenny was either eating candy bars or running to the toilet because, she said, that’s what having babies made you do. We hardly got in the ladies’ room when I went completely to pieces and that’s funny because I’m not the type who cries in front of anybody seeing as I can’t stand having people feel sorry for me or maybe laugh at me up their sleeve. But this Mary Molina was being such a doll after what I’d been through that I just couldn’t help bawling. Thank God she didn’t say a single word until I began calming down because I hate someone who puts their arm around you and says, There, there, everything’s going to be all right, and that sort of crap, especially when you know they don’t really give a damn about you and maybe even feel good because you’re more miserable than they happen to be.

When I finally started pulling myself together Mary Molina handed me her pretty handkerchief with pink tatting all around it and then she said, Don’t let Jenny get you down. She’s not so bad when you know her, only her husband’s been giving her a rough time and she’s taking it out on everyone else. As for the fellas, they always act that way whenever we get a new girl—even those not as pretty as you, like me for instance. All you got to do is ignore them and in a week they’ll leave you strictly alone. I don’t mean you should act stuck up or anything like that. Only you got to make them see you’re not the kind of girl they can make cracks at and then you’ll see most of them are okay. Even the fellas with the dirtiest tongues can be civil to you once they see you won’t stand for their monkey business.

For a long time I took Mary Molina’s advice and didn’t give those fellas the least encouragement. For instance, though I’m a size five and can only afford to buy dresses on sale because they don’t make cheap dresses in size five—which makes me wonder why they don’t because they must think only rich girls can squeeze into one—for weeks I wore only those ancient rags I used to wear when I first went to high school and Aunt Clara, thank God, wouldn’t let me get rid of. I mean they were all size ten, which I never thought I’d wear again, and were so big I could have been nine months pregnant like that Jenny and you’d think I was lying if I told you so. So hiding my light under a bushel that way, as the saying goes, and keeping my mouth shut and my eyes glued to my shoe rack, the fellas stopped being so fresh, exactly as Mary Molina said. But I didn’t stop being scared, especially after what happened the day before Christmas when I’d only been working there a month. You know, Father Morelli is always painting a picture of hell on the altar and frankly I don’t really think he knows what he’s talking about, even if priests are supposed to know everything, because if he came to the shop that day he could have seen the bona fide thing—at least that’s what I thought on that first Christmas.

Here it was the eve of our Savior’s birthday and honest to God you’d swear they were singing happy birthday to the devil instead. In the morning things were more or less quiet, except once in a while I saw one of the fellas take a bottle from their lunch pail or hidden in the cleaning rags under their work bench and take a drink. A couple of guys winked and said, Come on, Angie, it’ll put hair on your chest. Of course I said, No, thank you, trying to be polite about it and giving a sickly imitation of a smile because not only was I embarrassed by their crude remark but the fact is all I ever had to drink as of that day was some of my father’s homemade dago red wine, which I was more or less weaned on and therefore you can’t exactly call drinking. But at lunch time the place turned into a genuine madhouse. Bottles started popping up out of nowheres and the fellas were teasing the girls to have a drink and saying such things as, This’ll make your belly-button twitch, and saying other things that were really raw, only a lot of the girls didn’t have to be teased. Fellas and girls were kissing all over the joint and coming up for air to screech Merry Christmas at each other and this fat slob Louis Cirvelli, who is a grandfather and therefore ought to know better, was laying on a bunch of rags behind some shoe rack with this girl they call Tessie-the-pig and his hands were crawling all over her and she was giggling and saying, Don’t you get enough from your girl friend? She was drunk, even I could see that, and right in the middle of a giggle she turned green and threw up all over Louis Cirvelli.

This awful Red McCoonley was trotting up and down the aisles, grabbing girls and kissing them left and right and even goosing some of them, and he tried to kiss me but naturally I wouldn’t let him. That bastard began chasing me around the service elevator and Louis Cirvelli, who was still wiping vomit off himself, was yelling, Catch her and give her one for me. Then all the other fellas joined in and some of the girls as well saying such things as, Come on. Red, we got two bucks on you to win, and I almost made it to the ladies’ room but of all things I managed to trip on the hem of that damn size ten dress and therefore Red McCoonley finally caught me. Mary Molina, God bless her, came at him with a shoe last, telling him to take his paws off me and saying he ought to be ashamed of himself picking on a mere kid. Drunk as he was, he let go of me in two seconds flat and seemed awfully ashamed because Mary Molina, who he and everyone else highly respects, was giving him hell. By that time I was in complete hysterics and Mary Molina bundled me up in my coat and said, You’d better go home, Angie, even though it was only lunch hour.

Well I’ve changed, I can tell you that. I mean we can’t always stay the same like Mary Molina, who some people say must be a living saint and maybe she is because nobody but a saint can remain 100% pure if you work in a lousy shoe shop long enough. I don’t mean I lowered myself into being another Tessie-the-pig, but I began wearing my size fives again and I stopped blushing at the drop of a hat the way I used to and if some of the guys happen to get fresh I just laugh it off because I finally wisened up and developed a sense of humor. Everybody tells me I’ve got a real sense of humor now because I don’t lose my temper except on rare occasions and I treat everything more or less as a joke. I mean they tell me dirty stories and try to feel me up and I don’t get mad or embarrassed like in the old days, not even when they call me Angieno-pants.

That began a couple or three Christmases after that first one when the guys all brought bottles in the shop again and that crazy Red McCoonley had a pocket mirror and went creeping up behind the girls and holding it between their legs. He did it to me and I never heard such a hollering and snorting from anybody, except maybe from those pigs Mr. Argento used to kill every spring in the hill behind his house, and all because he discovered I had no panties on. Well, I could have told him I never wear panties seeing as I can’t stand to wear them. I mean I always feel more or less smothered and itchy if I wear them and so I don’t and the same goes for girdles too. My mother would kill me if she knew, but every time I take a bath I pull a pair of panties out of my dresser and toss it in the wash and so of course she thinks I wear them faithfully. But this Red McCoonley found out I didn’t and naturally he spread the word around, which is why they began calling me Angie-nopants. It used to make me mad at first, but I have since learned to laugh it off.

Anyway, Angie-no-pants is certainly better than Tessie-thepig. That’s what they call that Tessie Arrostino because, if you’ll pardon the expression, all the guys say she’s been laid by half the shoe shop and one day, when the boss was sick in bed and so there was no one to keep a watchful eye on them, a dozen fellas jumped her in the men’s room. That’s what Red McCoonley says anyway, and he informed me what jumped means because I was still pretty stupid, but I don’t know if I should believe Red McCoonley seeing as he’s a flannel mouth and a liar and that’s the God’s honest truth. I mean he’s said things about me that are downright lies. Well, maybe not all lies, but the fact is he sure does suffer from a loose jaw and why in hell did he have to tell everybody anyway? I can certainly feel for Tessie because I know how it is when people start talking about you. For instance, they’re always making cracks about me even if I’m nowhere near being a pig like Tessie, thank God, which is exactly what I tell them. And if it wasn’t for that bastard Red McCoonley maybe I’d still be a virgin.

It happened that Christmas time when he found out I didn’t have panties on and practically everybody was feeling absolutely no pain including Tessie-the-pig, who was so far gone she passed out cold in the service elevator between floors and Red McCoonley got a ladder to get her out and put her over his shoulder like she was a mere bag of potatoes. He certainly is strong and you could see his muscles bulging through his shirt until you thought for sure the seams would pop. The boss, meaning the head foreman who is boss of all the other foremen in the entire shop, is this nice Mr. Dineen. The trouble is he’s too nice and therefore lets everybody get away with murder. Anyway, he saw all the goings-on and how we were all feeling no pain and he only scratches his bald head and grins his usual grin, meaning with just his upper teeth showing because his lowers hurt him, he claims, and so he never bothers wearing them, and even if it was only three o’clock he let us all go home, before the cops raid the joint mistaking it for a cat house, he said. He’s a real card sometimes when his stomach isn’t bothering him, having what is known as a quiet sense of humor, but when it bothers him he chews Rolaids the whole live-long day and burps a lot and hardly says a word except excuse me, because he’s very polite.

Red McCoonley, who owns this broken-down jalopy which Louis Cirvelli claims that Tom Mix, who was king of the cowboys before I was even born, traded in for his horse and which has one door all dented so you have to crawl in on the driver’s side, offered to drive me home. I said, No thank you, what would my mother say if she saw me driving home with a strange man who happens to be thoroughly married as well, though if I told him the gospel truth it’s my Aunt Clara who’d be more apt to give me hell than my mother. You’ve got a point there, he said, but have you given any thought to what she might say if she sees you in this condition? Don’t you think it’s a good idea if maybe you had a cup of coffee, for instance? Christ, you can at least let me buy you a cup of coffee, can’t you?

Though I happen to think he was exaggerating slightly as to my present condition, the fact is I made the discovery that rum isn’t half bad when you mix it with coke and so when Louis Cirvelli and Red offered me some off and on during the day I took them up on it for a change and therefore not quite myself. I don’t in the least mean I was anywhere near being drunk. It’s just that I’m still not used to the stuff though I am the first to admit, now that we’re nineteen and look every bit of twenty-one, that Rosie and I will sometimes stop at the Hub-bub for a grasshopper after our usual Friday night movie. Anyway, that rum and coke almost had the effect of sending me packing to the ladies’ room and throwing it all up, but that’s exactly what Louis Cirvelli and Red McCoonley were waiting for me to do and naturally I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction. So I swallowed hard a couple of hundred times and hummed Christmas carols, trying to get my mind off it, and pretty soon I was more or less floating on the same air as everybody else. If you want to know the truth, it’s the first time I didn’t put up the least resistance when the fellas started grabbing me and kissing me and to a certain degree I was even enjoying it except that Red had to spoil it all by french kissing me though, much to my surprise, I found I was getting half a charge out of it and was therefore tempted to return the favor.

Red is over thirty and has four kids, though he has the nerve to claim he doesn’t get along with his wife, and he knows the score but I didn’t know a damn thing, not even about french kissing until he used me as a guinea pig. Considering his age, you might almost call him handsome if he didn’t remind you of a red-haired ape. To begin with he’s got this tremendous head of curly red hair and his shirt is always unbuttoned practically to the waist so you can see all that red hair on his chest as well. That bastard is so damn proud of his hair and also of his muscles too. I must admit he has every reason to be proud of those muscles, reminding you of a poor man’s Mr. America, and almost every time I bring him one of my odd shoes to work on he says, Angie, feel my muscle and tell me if you ever felt such a goddamn muscle before. I’m not the type who goes around feeling muscles, thank you, is what I used to tell him, but one day I finally broke down and felt it and didn’t quite know what to make of it when, as the saying goes, my breasts practically snapped to attention as a result. After that when he asked me to feel his muscle I always did but I never once gave him the satisfaction of telling him if I ever felt such a muscle like his before, though frankly I never did.

Come on, he kept saying that day outside the shop, let me buy you a cup of Java. You sure can’t go home with half a jag on, can you? Why you can’t even walk a straight line! Anyway, seeing that it was mostly me who kept feeding you those rum and cokes, how do you suppose it makes me feel sending you home this way? A cup of hot coffee will put you back on your feet again, you’ll see. So what’s a cup of coffee between friends? And all the while he was holding open the door on the driver’s side of his broken-down jalopy seeing as the other one was all bashed in and therefore couldn’t possibly open. Well, okay, I finally said. I guess there’s nothing wrong in letting you buy me a cup of coffee, providing it doesn’t put a strain on the family budget, what with four kids to feed.

It began snowing the very moment we turned onto Main Street, those gigantic flakes we used to catch on our tongues when we were kids, and I said, Oh I’m glad we’re going to have snow for Christmas, aren’t you? Yeah, yeah sure, he said and I said, Don’t you just love snow, and he said, Yeah, I just love it, Angie baby, I really do, and I said, I wish you wouldn’t call me Angie baby, and he said, Why not? and I said, You know why not, and he said, No I don’t, but I dropped the discussion right then and there when I noticed he was taking the road out of town in the general direction of the Mohawk Trail. Where do you think you’re taking me for that lousy cup of coffee? I finally thought to ask him, and he said, I got the bright idea you’d like some fresh air first—to sort of clear the head, Angie baby.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, if he was telling the truth, but in no time at all I could see he wasn’t when he put his hand on my knee and squeezed it just as we were going around that awfully dangerous hairpin turn on the trail and said, God, Angie, you’ve got nice knees, not bony like some girls I can mention. Taking me completely by surprise, I didn’t know if I should slap his hand or say thanks for the compliment and while I was debating the whole question his hand began exploring elsewhere. I should have jumped out of that jalopy before it went another foot only I happened to remember the door on my side wouldn’t open and, just supposing it did open, I don’t think I could have made a single move anyway, not even when he stopped the car down some side road and shoved his nose between my breasts. The fact is I was thoroughly enjoying whatever it was he was doing, though naturally I was thoroughly scared at the same time, and therefore not a peep came out of me even when he more or less hauled me into the back seat like a sack of flour. Angie baby, he said, I’ve been dreaming about this for one helluva long time so you just feel my muscle and relax, okay? Say, you’re not gonna start bawling at this late date, now are you? Which is exactly what I was doing considering my mixed emotions at the time. Listen, he said, just relax and squeeze my muscles. Have you ever felt such goddamn muscles in all your born days? No, I finally managed to sob out, I can honestly say I never have.

Afterwards Red got some pink Kleenex out of the glove compartment and said, Here, blow your nose, and I began crying all the louder saying, I suppose you keep pink Kleenex on hand just for such an occasion as this, and he said, Christ, Angie, it’s my wife who puts it there on account of the kids always having runny noses, and for some reason or other this remark really put the skids under me and gave me the shakes, aside from the fact that I was already shaking from being nearly frozen to death seeing as Red freely admitted his heater was just about ready for the junk heap along with the rest of his jalopy. Much to my surprise he became sweet as apple pie when he saw me shaking that way and was good enough to get his army blanket from the back and tuck it around me saying, Now, Angie, it wasn’t as bad as all that, was it? You gotta admit I didn’t tear you to pieces as some other clod might of and besides I could of sworn you were asking for it, what with going around in public with no pants on and feeling my muscles all the time and so how the hell was I to know you still had your goddamn cherry? Looking at the brighter side, if I hadn’t of done it somebody else would of sooner or later and if it’s any consolation maybe he wouldn’t of given a good goddamn if he knocked you up in the process. At least you can thank God I did my fair share of being careful along those lines.

Getting some satisfaction out of soaking up his wife’s Kleenexes like crazy, I finally managed to say, If you’re so careful how come you’ve got four kids in five years of married life, as you yourself have bragged about on more than one occasion. So help me God I was complaining, not bragging, he said. It’s all her fault, the bitch, seeing as every time I swear I’m gonna cut out on her she manages to have one of her so-called accidents and then starts tearing her hair out and biting her fingernails clear down to the bone screaming how I can’t be so mean as to leave her stranded with three kids and a fourth on the way or four kids and a fifth on the way. A fifth! I said. You mean to sit here and tell me she is pregnant again as of this moment and you had the nerve to pull such a stunt on her as well as me at such a time? Angie, he said, the God’s honest truth is that I am never sure when and if my wife happens to be pregnant until she starts busting out all over and as of this moment I am as much in the dark about it as you are.

By this time he was beginning to sweat blood because the wheels were skidding in the snow and we weren’t able to budge an inch. Finally he said, Christ, Angie, we’re just getting in deeper all the time and the only thing we can do is get out and give her a push. You’re actually expecting me to go out in all that snow and give you a helping hand? I said and he said, If you’ve gotta better suggestion I’m willing to lend an ear, unless you like the idea of hibernating up here with me for the rest of the goddamn winter. That remark did it, not wanting him to think this idea had the least appeal to me, and so I forgot my tears and helped him push, meanwhile doing a fine job of getting my feet all wet. Anyway, we did manage to roll it out of the rut, thank God, and once the car was safely back on the Mohawk Trail I took up where I left off as far as crying is concerned, though at that point I wasn’t quite sure why I was crying. I mean it’s true I was aching all over and feeling guilty, seeing as I have always been the religious type, and freezing from head to toe and I’d probably end up with a good case of the flu at the very least, but the fact remains I more or less enjoyed what went on in that back seat, though naturally I would never admit such a thing to Red McCoonley. But I could see my bawling was making him more and more miserable and so I kept it up for the longest time.

I finally cut it out after I managed to use up every last one of those pink Kleenexes and then sank back against that dented door and wouldn’t say another word to him all the while we drove back down the Trail even though he kept saying, Aw come on, Angie, can’t you be a good sport and say something? Can’t you give me a little bit of a smile maybe? Hell, what do you think girls are for, especially if they’re stacked like you? Christ, it ain’t the end of the world, you know, because somebody would of done it sooner or later. Now ain’t that so? Hell, nobody expects to catch himself a virgin nowadays, if that’s what’s bugging you. Don’t you know that, you dumb, crazy kid? Well, don’t you?

Naturally I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of answering him and it was only when we got to the bottom of Chestnut Street hill that I finally opened up and said, Let me off here, you bastard Red McCoonley, because I want neither friend nor foe seeing you drop me off at my door. That’s okay by me, he said, considering I ain’t got chains and therefore can’t make it up the hill in the first place. Then he had the nerve to yell after me, Hey, I never did buy you that cup of coffee, and right then and there I told him to go to hell. At that very moment I suddenly hit my lowest point yet because who should pop up ahead of me but old Mrs. Mortidella who everybody calls La Nera seeing as she always wears black from head to toe. I would have tried sneaking right past her but she was waiting for me, as was painfully obvious, and I knew for sure she must have seen Red McCoonley leaving me off and that in no time it would be an open book to the entire neighborhood and my Aunt Clara as well.

Right off she started with, You got a fella now, Angie? I said, Oh, he’s just somebody I work with who gave me a lift on account of the snow, and she said, He’s a nice fella? An Italian maybe? He’s just someone who gave me a ride home, I said. He’s not such a nice fella if he lets you walk up the hill, she said and I said, You can’t expect him to take me up such a steep hill without chains on his car. Well, you shouldn’t go with a fella who doesn’t drive you to your doorstep, she said and I then informed her in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t going with him nor even thinking about it, but I could see she didn’t believe me.

I’m good-natured most of the time, at least everybody tells me I am, and I honestly try to like people and give them the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes I think I really hate La Nera. She’s always wearing this puss a mile long, as if she was swishing vinegar around in her mouth and had no intention whatsoever of either swallowing it or spitting it out. People say it’s because her husband ran off with her younger sister and they went back to Italy to live off his social security while she was left stranded with her two daughters who nobody will marry because they’re so ugly and have terrible dispositions besides. You know how people will say Jews have long noses, which may be true to a certain extent though in high school I knew maybe a dozen boys and girls who were Jews and I have to admit only this Benny Hochberg, whose father runs the Army and Navy store on Sparrow Street, had a long nose and the fact is even his wasn’t as long as La Nera’s.

To top it all off Josephine and Jenny Mortidella, who are twins and certainly look it, have even longer noses than their mother. Not just long but with a big bump in the middle, which is why everyone calls them Le Pappaqalle, meaning the parrots, though I usually don’t go for the idea of calling people names. Anyway, it’s no wonder nobody will take them out even if they’ve got these mahogany hope chests sitting like coffins at the foot of their bed and filled to the brim with fancy cut-work sheets and pillow cases and crocheted bedspreads which they take great pride in showing off to one and all, who couldn’t care less even if they are gorgeous. Aunt Clara says they’ve been twenty-five years old for the last ten years and I for one can believe it.

I don’t know if I hate Mrs. Mortidella so much or if she merely gives me the creeps. I mean she’s always wearing black, like I said, with not a bit of any other color visible to the naked eye because she tells everybody she is still in mourning for her dead husband even if they happen to know better, and her face is white and scaly, like dried-up bread dough, and to look at her you’d swear she passed away a week ago and they forgot to bury her. Also, she’s always saying the worst kinds of things, as if she was a fortune teller, like when she told Teresa D’lmpiccio that her baby was too good for this world because he never cried and was always smiling at everybody just like an angel, a perfect angel, and when Teresa D’lmpiccio’s baby drowned in the bathtub that time she went to answer the telephone—which was terrible because it was a wrong number and therefore she wasn’t gone more than a minute—La Nera said I told you so to everyone. Didn’t I say he was an angel and wasn’t long for this world? That’s exactly what she said to one and all. But some people, including my own mother, think this Le Nera put the evil eye on the baby and on other people too because just before my father had his stroke she said to my mother, Well, Annina, soon enough you’ll be a widow, just like me, and even though my father didn’t die my mother might as well be a widow for all the good he is to her or anybody else for that matter. Aunt Clara says my mother shouldn’t believe such superstitious nonsense, but sometimes I can’t help half believing it myself, which is another reason I can’t stand the sight of her.

Like with me, for instance, she’s always saying I’m too good-looking and how you have to watch out if you’re too good-looking. Even now she was going into that same old song and dance, in Italian this time since her English is far from perfect, saying, "Sometimes I think it’s a blessing to have plain daughters like my Jenny and Josephine and not pretty like you. In Italy all the pretty girls go bad. Can you believe it? In my village there was this Serafina Biancano. Such a beauty you never saw with tiny hands and feet and eyes the color of the moscado grape just as it begins to ripen on the vine. All the young roosters danced the tarantella around her and turned her head and then one of them caught her and she was ruined for life. So it happens with all the pretty girls in the old country."

Well, this isn’t the old country, I said to her and thought for sure she somehow knew all about what happened on the Mohawk Trail and I began walking faster, hoping she couldn’t keep up with me, but I should have known better because that woman’s got more pep than both her daughters combined, who are always complaining about a backache or headache or about how tired they are and meanwhile have a soft job sitting on their asses all day in the cotton mill while their mother works in the hospital emptying bedpans and shaving people before they have an operation and things like that. Yes, it was no strain for her to keep up with me and still manage to yap away at the same time. Just yesterday I was saying it to your Aunt Clara in Penney’s when I was buying some towels for my girls—a little Christmas present, you know. ‘Angie’s too pretty,’ I said to her, and you should keep your eye on her like she was a saintly nun who the devil wants for his very own. But your Aunt Clara takes after your father, don’t you know? Not now, poor man, but the way he used to be with his nose always in the air and putting his fingers in his ears when somebody told him something for his own good. Yes, your Aunt Clara’s just like that, but I told her anyway. ‘Angie’s too pretty,’ that’s what I said, ‘and I hope she won’t make Annina’s cross heavier because God knows it’s heavy enough already.’

It got so I just couldn’t stand listening to her another second and so I said, Look, Mrs. Mortidella, my feet are two solid blocks of ice and so I hope you don’t mind if I run the rest of the way, and that’s exactly what I began doing only she yelled after me, Better you run from the devil when he tempts a pretty girl like you. Or maybe he’s already caught you, eh? Oh, that damn Mrs. Mortidella. Why did she have