pits. Copper turns green but it don’t rot.”
He walked off without saying good-bye, having gone back into his nodding routine. Connie passed by and saw him on the way to the cake table.
“Eh, but what’s he thinkin’ about?” she asked. “He’ll wind up killin’ all of us.”
Vic said, “He’s the champion bottle collector in the neighborhood, too. He sees a bottle in the curb, he’ll jump out of a speedin’ car to pick it up.” There was affection in Vic’s voice, then he suddenly lost his relaxed look and stiffened as a heavyset girl made her way toward us.
“This is Rosemary,” he said. She hooked her arm through his elbow. “We go out,” he added, sort of apologetically. Rosemary forced a smile at me. Her face had so much makeup on it that it didn’t reflect light. She pulled Vic to the other side of the room to talk with him.
Unmoored, I drifted about until Mel caught my elbow.
“They made me put this dress on.” It looked awful, loose at the chest and snug at the waist. She kept tugging it down in back.
Suddenly there was a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” throughout the room as the new mother appeared, baby in her arms. The infant was like the stamen of a flower, surrounded by blanket petals.
The mother’s hair was pulled back into a ponytail. It was a few seconds before I even noticed her husband behind her, a skinny man in a dark suit. He touched a hand to the baby, then indicated the gift-laden table.
“You’ve been so generous,” he said in a quivering voice. “It’s wonderful for our Joyella to have such wonderful friends as she starts her life.”
Everyone murmured approval, but as the new father was about to continue his speech there was a commotion in the stairway. A man in a three-piece white suit walked with great solemnity to the parents. His silvery hair looked freshly barbered, and a gold watch chain was looped across his round belly. There was a fat red carnation in his lapel.
“Holy shit, that’s Ammiratti,” Mel hissed. “He’s on everyone’s shit list.”
With a flourish he placed an envelope on the gift table, pecked the mother on the cheek, and shook hands with the father. He apologized that his wife couldn’t come — her stomach was troubling her. The father nodded without offering words of sympathy.
Crimson crept up Ammiratti’s neck. He mopped his face with a handkerchief and bowed to the silent room, then left. Conversation resumed when the echo of his footsteps faded.
“A flower in his lapel,” Grace Rothstein said shrilly. “Forty cents every day for a fresh flower!” She slapped her right hand into the crook of her left elbow, kinking it into an obscene right angle. Everyone but one guy laughed, and I knew he had to be her husband, “Uncle Rudy.”
“Ammiratti’s a rich bastard,” Mel explained. “He owns a lotta houses, plus that empty lot where the hole is. Everybody hates him for that.”
“How come?”
“ ’Cause burger joints bring colored people,” she said, irritated by my ignorance. “He screwed us. He sold everybody out even though he has more money than everybody else put together.”
She bit into a thick cream pastry. I knew she was parroting the words of the adults she lived with.
“The balls on him,” she continued, through a mouthful of cream. “Walkin’ into a roomful o’ people who hate you and pretendin’ they love you.”
Johnny Gallo came in, sticking out in that chubby crowd like a foreigner. He had no hips or buttocks, and wore black T-shirts and slacks that made him look even taller and slimmer than he was. His sideburns were shaved high and his black hair was combed straight back. He looked like a walking sperm cell.
Mel had a mild crush on Johnny, and ditched me to join him. I was marooned in the midst of all those cliques — Vic and Rosemary, Angie and Freddie, Connie and Grace. For the first time in two days I felt a real pang for my father.
The baby lay asleep in her bassinet. I felt a little jealous of her, wishing I was little enough to climb in there and lie beside her.
* * *
“You like it here okay?” Vic asked that night when the two of us were in bed.
“I guess,” I said.
“When I get a little more time we’ll play more stickball and stuff. I gotta practice right now, with the playoffs and everything.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Hey. I forgot to ask you how you liked my girl Rosemary.”
“She’s nice,” I lied.
“Yeah, she’s somethin’,” Vic said. “She got me through school, you know? Helpin’ me with homework and stuff. Never yelled at me, no matter how stupid I was.”
Before falling asleep I noticed Vic staring at the ceiling, smiling.
CHAPTER THREE
WHILE coffee percolated each morning, Connie combed out her hair and braided it. I would watch from the doorway to the basement, without her knowing it.
Loose, it hung to her breasts. Her expression while she worked the comb was somber, as if the stroking motion stirred up thoughts of her life’s mistakes. She also looked glum because she didn’t put her teeth in until she was through braiding.
Save for six brown lower teeth, the dentures were a complete set. They didn’t embarrass her. She had given birth to her kids in the days before doctors knew about calcium loss, so she felt the missing teeth weren’t her fault.
Besides, she took exceptional pride in her moist skin, boasting that she’d never had a pimple in her life. Three “no’s” accounted for that — no restaurant food, no liquor, no makeup.
Talcum powder and aspirins were the only things in the medicine cabinet. She even made the dresses she wore, simple tentlike things with buttons at the cleavage.
Only her underwear was elaborate. She referred to her girdle as a “harness,” full of hooks and straps. Hanging on the shower rod to dry, her pink slips looked like sails. They billowed when you opened the bathroom door.
She wore black nun shoes, and she didn’t walk so much as she tilted from foot to foot. With each step the entire plane of her flat foot came down, thunking decisively.
Overhead, on the top floor, lived another person, who trod so lightly that I didn’t even know he existed until my third day there. His name was Agosto Palmieri. We knew he was there only when he played his opera records.
* * *
With the exception of this peculiar loner, most of the other people I’d met came out to see Vic play baseball.
Even the meticulous Angie ate supper fast on game nights. On the first one I was there for Vic sat with his cap on backwards and his feet in slippers, cleats at his side. He said the hat made him feel lucky, so Angie waived standard table etiquette.
His
