32
A man from Dayton – slim, coffee-colored man in mirrored sunglasses – hauls the Cincinnati Reds lunchboxes out to his dark SUV. He has to make six trips to get every last shipping carton and Sophie can’t wait to tell Joe. Heat rises from the concrete. Up and down the block, window units drip and idle. Two girls – not more than ten years old – quarrel on the steps of the building across the street. One screeches, “That’s none of your beeswax,” and Sophie shakes her head, almost laughing. She hasn’t heard that expression in a long time; it’s from her mother’s childhood. Or maybe all children say that. Rosita’s donuts give off the familiar greasy sweet odor. Not far away, Uncle Leo buys a snow cone from a street vendor.
She doesn’t want to get caught up talking to Uncle Leo. She wants to close up shop, get over to Magda’s kitchen to finish a drawing, and in the evening, at the museum, she’ll hang the work of her students in a competition. Staying busy means she will drop into bed like a stone and sleep.
Dom Silva appears seemingly from out of nowhere. “Sophie,” he croons ingratiatingly, “you deserve better than this.” He tips his fedora. His lush moustache wiggles when he speaks. There’s a fresh stain the size of a dime on his tie – salsa or ketchup. “I bet your mother and I see eye to eye on that.” His smoker’s voice is like gravel underfoot.
The man from Dayton eases out of his parking spot. Sophie smiles, automatic goodbye. She sighs and says, “What I deserve is none of your beeswax.”
“Are you open? I need to buy a present. For my brother. A die-hard Cubs fan.”
Dom Silva steps inside the shop and wanders among the memorabilia. Picking up this and that. All the while, talking. Sophie stands behind the counter, sipping ice water.
“I had nothing but respect for Chanti,” Dom says. “He was one of the good ones. I have nothing but respect for your family, Sophie. Your mother and I taught together once, did you know that?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Your mother. She’s a sweetheart. She’s the best. We did our best. But teaching’s for the young, I always say. It takes energy.”
“Chanti had that.”
“You can say that again.”
He sets a Plexiglass box on the counter: a ball signed by Sammy Sosa. Dom Silva reaches into his roomy front pocket and pulls out a wad of bills and peels off the money and slides it across the counter.
He says, “You know that little yellow house? One block over? The one the Polish gal used to live in? The wiring’s shot, mice have chewed it up and shit it out, the plumbing’s from the Middle Ages, I’d hate to have to breathe the asbestos over there – that place is selling for 200 K.”
“Our house is not abandoned, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Precisely. Precisely my point.”
“Look, Mr. Silva. You’re talking to the wrong person.”
“Don’t you like what I’m doing for the neighborhood? I want it to thrive. Artists, people from UIC, they’re gonna love it. Love it. The meth labs’ll fold.”
The lively studios eight blocks east spring to mind. The lush courtyards. The high production – silk screens, paintings, etchings, ceramics, jewelry, the cornucopia of art being made 24/7. Dom Silva wants a fraction of complicity; she gives it to him, saying, “That would be good.”
When he’s gone, she locks up the shop. Dom Silva has strolled on, making his rounds; out the window she can see him chatting up the bicycle repairman a few doors away.
She slips out the back and down the alley with a fanny pack at her belly; a drawing kit under her arm; a small portfolio. Keeping her basics – lipstick, tissue, and a few dollars – in the fanny pack makes her feel secure; someone would have to get awfully close to take what’s hers. That’s city life; she never gave it much thought before. But now she is more careful. More strategic. Is she a fool to stay? Dom Silva will never hear her say so. Ems once called him smarmy. So they have a history. She stores away that tidbit, to ask Emma about someday. When will they begin to talk? Really talk?
The baby doesn’t show yet, but she imagines what it will feel like when he does. She or he. Skirts with elastic waistbands will be perfect and her belly will be brown and beautiful and Chanti will be proud. Crossing Ashland Avenue, managing the steely traffic, she speaks to Chanti: You’ll see.
Father Roberto ducks out of San Pio, shielding his eyes from the sun. She has not spoken to him since the funeral and she has not been to Mass. She is afraid to go. Afraid of her own feelings. Even though she speaks to Chanti, she is not a believer. When you die, you die; you go back to the earth; this is part of an argument she will have with herself for years. She turns away from Father Roberto.
Sophie’s art professors taught her to violate habit, but it is habit she turns to in Magda’s kitchen: the rudimentary act of rendering. She has a series of drawings now, to be given to her baby. I did these the summer after your father died. This is your grandmother’s kitchen. As it was.
Upstairs a CD player or radio has been left on, Mexican ballad. She calls out, “Hola?” No one answers.
Sophie sets to work, finishing a drawing of Magda’s herbs in red clay pots. The music from a far corner of the house is faint and she is fine with the music, it is far enough away that she does not allow it to change her mood; she is lost in trance. Loving line and smudge. Cross-hatch. Curlicues of leaf and flower.
The last heartbroken song ends and no radio announcer bombasts and no new song commences, but that does not register with Sophie. Nothing registers until a footstep, a bump. Arturo, home early, or one of the sisters. Before she can call out, Tony sing-songs, “So-phie, So-phie Gonzales.”
He steps from the dining room into the kitchen.
Wearing Chanti’s leather jacket.
She feels it like a fresh wound. She carefully places her drawing pad and pencil on the kitchen table, hands shaky, but only she might know that, he can’t tell. She doesn’t want him to know. It becomes very important that he not notice her hands.
Tony’s mouth is twisted, his eyes dilated. “You didn’t expect me, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
He squares his shoulders and with his fists he gives the jacket a tug along the hem. “Looks good, hey, Sophie?”
She turns deliberately, in slow motion, to the refrigerator, opens it, and takes out a quart bottle of ice water. She sets the ice water on the counter. She opens a cupboard and takes down a blue tumbler and pours water. Peripherally she is aware of the world outside the kitchen; a boy rides up and down the sidewalk between the houses; his Big Wheel grinds on the concrete; the woman in her sundress sits on the back porch next door, smoking.
“I like this jacket.”
“That’s Arturo’s jacket now.”
“You could’ve given it to me.”
Sophie drinks the ice water. It feels sharp in her mouth. She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of looking into her eyes. “Chanti would’ve wanted his father to have it.”
Tony shoves his hands into the jacket pockets. “What if I take it?”
Sunlight cuts into the room from a high window; his hair looks as polished and dark as a wooden mask. An enigma to her. He’s from a mean world Sophie does not have much intimate knowledge of. She’s not that savvy, after all. She says, “You steal it, you’ll have to live with that.”
Tony circles around her and Sophie turns as he turns. “You want something you think I got, don’t you?”
“What’s that,” Sophie says. She imagines throwing the ice water in his face.
“Not this,” Tony says, grabbing his crotch. “No, no, no.” He puckers his mouth. “Chanti stuck his guapo nose where it didn’t belong.”
The kitchen door swings open and Dulcy muscles in, carting a baby carrier with two hands. The baby squalls, red-faced. Right behind Dulcy, Rick totes a mesh bag of dirty laundry over his shoulder. He looks as if he’s come from the gym – in shorts and a tank top, a gloss of sweat on his face and biceps and deltoids. He looks strong.
The refrigerator kicks on.
Dulcy, squat, combative Dulcy, her dreadlocks braided with rags, in tight jeans she can’t quite button since the baby was born, sets the pink carrier down and says, “Que pasa?” She unclips the buckle and swings the baby up to her shoulder. Her coo and murmur frantic.
Rick drops the laundry. He glances from Sophie to Tony, hikes up his gym shorts at the waist. He says, “Tony, what’re you doing here?”
“Hey, man --” Tony says, palms up as if to deflect a blow. “It’s cool.” He lets the leather jacket fall, and takes a giant step backward. “I’m not here, okay? Pretend I’m not here.” And he’s gone, through the living room, the aluminum storm door rattling.
The baby will not be easily soothed; she has cried so hard that her breath comes in ragged sobs. Dulcy says, “Are you okay, Sophie?” She snaps open her blouse and prepares to nurse the baby. “All right, all right,” she whispers, “get a grip.”
Rick retrieves the leather jacket and drapes it over the back of a kitchen chair. “What happened?”
“He knows something,” Sophie says. “He knows.”
33
A week after DR dreamed up the soaking tub, it comes into being: corroded iron pipes have been replaced with shiny copper; she has a dedicated hot water heater; the walls and floor of the porch are painted bright white; the exterior of the tub is a glossy midnight blue, and DR has installed a skylight through which the moon, stark pendant, is visible when Liz lies back in the hot water. The window between the porch and kitchen is open and the music of Karsh Kale coming from the kitchen is electronic enough to appeal to her former-aloof-self, percussive enough to appeal to her becoming-earthy-self. She believes that all those characters she invented with her therapist will fade, like the titles of paperbacks forgotten out in the weather. Beyond the blackened screen fireflies flicker. An owl hoots. The water is hot. The suds fragrant. Steam rises. She has given the men instructions to leave her alone. Joe and Tommy are over at Vi’s.
But someone comes knock-knocking on the door.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” DR says. “I know, I know. You don’t want company. I’m not company. I’m a friend with a present --” His voice is soft, persuasive.
Liz sits up, her breasts exposed. She crosses her arms over her breasts. “What’re you up to?”
“Well. I thought --” He holds aloft a gleaming bottle. A square-ish liquor bottle: tequila. “It’s sort of . . . a celebration.”
“What is your problem?”
“Can I come in and have a shot with you?”
34
Later, she makes him leave. She wants a little peace.
Damon will lie in his tent, his brain aswirl with tequila and the image of Liz, glorious in the tub, her breasts afloat, her skin wet, luminous. He has wanted to see her naked ever since the first day when she saw him. It was only fair. He goes over all that he said. What he’s never said before to anyone. “You’re beautiful, you are.”
And Liz, the way she took it: her smile genuine. That devil tequila made him brave.
He wants to treat her well; he wants to rub her back; he wants to buy new shoes; he wants – truthfully, yes, he wants to feel himself inside her, a nerve-vibrating yearning. He believes that she wants it, too – it’s a matter of time and privacy – and he has thought of fucking her in the parsnip patch and he has thought of fucking her in the barn and he has thought of fucking her in his tent and there is always moonlight or sunlight, always atmosphere, the desperate moan of his first great-hearted time. Liz. Her name presents itself as if it’s carved in granite and grown over with vines like a green woman frieze. Iconic woman. Archetypal woman. The two of them unmasked, laughing, Liz’s legs secure around him, large love, large. Oh, my Bohemian valentine. The mice might sprint around the barn and the ground might be rocky in the tent and the parsnip patch is frothy with parsnip tops and gritty, but there they will be transformed. Damon Ray Dillon gets it, he understands why they call it falling. He is so new to love, and young, that he forgets about Liz’s brass bed. Eventually that will dawn on him. The brass bed on the second floor – near the bay window of sky – will become the seat of all delight. Banners will wave over their castle. It’s only July, mid-summer, and every long summer day the banners will wave and all the Irish songs he’s sung make sense now, they make the damnedest sense, aswirl, aswirl, tequila-borne, the river of flowers and bowers and bridges, paddling against sorrow, winning the heart of a lady, smiles beguiling stones, arise, arise, lassie, could he – corny young red-headed guy – could he call her lassie?
From this you may discern: I still believe in the transformative power of love. The first few days or weeks are crucial, brewing up a state of grace that couples need to store like wine for dire straits that lay ahead.