* * *
I WAS IN PAIN FOR the rest of that day. My abdomen was turning in on itself. I thought that it was because I’d had sex. Even if you don’t believe in God, you can chalk it up to biology; your body will occasionally be confused if a penis pokes in and out and doesn’t ejaculate inside of you. You didn’t fulfill your biological purpose, nor did you have a sincere orgasm.
I took the jumpsuit off—how stupid clothes are after you’ve gotten drunk and fucked in them—and lay on the cowhide couch I’d owned for many years, the one on which I’d given Big Sky that first massage. My thighs and the backs of my arms stuck to the leather. I was afraid to turn the air conditioner on because the noise might summon Lenny. I didn’t want to see anyone, especially him. I thought an orgasm might unclench my abdomen so I flipped onto my stomach. I rode one of the wide leather pillows and thought of River fucking someone even younger than he was. I thought of Jack and River double-teaming some small blonde wearing an anklet. Finally, right at the edge, I pictured Alice’s huge naked chest squashed against a Corian kitchen counter and Big Sky plowing her from behind, an expression of ecstasy on his face that he’d never had with me. I came easily, explosively, but the pain did not subside.
16
AT THE END OF THE dinner that day my grandmother was raped, Joe and Evelyn dropped us off at our little red A-frame. At the restaurant they’d ordered dessert, a Baked Alaska. My mother smoked and watched them eat it, two herons drawing their big lips over the creamy forkfuls. Joe Jr. and I each got a scoop of rainbow sherbet in a little silver bowl.
—Bye, Maria, keep us posted! Evelyn called from the car. Meanwhile Joe Sr. walked us to the door. He held my mother’s elbow. She was a little unsteady in her noisy wooden heels. He insisted on coming inside to make sure the place was secure.
—No need, Joe, my mother said. She was always appropriating English idioms with her accent. It made me hate her a little.
Joe made a show of poking around, going upstairs into our bedrooms.
I need to describe the house. Right as you walked in, there was the galley kitchen, a little rectangle of Formica and a four-burner white stove. My parents were very clean people and yet the Pocono house of my memory is covered in a film of grease. There were those plastic salt-and-pepper shakers—a brown top to indicate pepper and taupe for salt—and every time I touched them I felt the need to wash my hands.
Alongside the kitchen and extending to the back of the house was the combination dining room and living area. This was covered in wall-to-wall beige carpet, thick and cheap. Our dining room table had candlesticks and a plastic tablecloth that my mother wiped down nightly with a sponge.
My mother was always cleaning, using her long nails to scrape hard crusts off of cabinets, spraying Windex at cloudy windows and moving her arms industriously to battle the streaks. Yet the house, for me, seemed categorically contaminated. Clearly I had some sort of a premonition.
At the rear were the stairs to the second floor; these, too, were carpeted. The stairwell was very narrow. As a toddler I’d once tumbled from the top to the landing. I can still remember the curved pain in my neck when I thudded at the bottom with my feet in the air. I was afraid I’d broken myself. But I was more afraid of my mother getting angry.
The second floor was railroad-style, a long, slender hallway with three bedrooms and one bathroom. My parents’—the master—was at the end of the hallway with the bathroom directly opposite. I slept in the bedroom closest to theirs, although most nights I slipped into bed beside my mother. The third bedroom, the one closest to the stairs, had two creepy twin beds with very tight sheets and knit blankets and light pink pillows with eyelet fringes. Sometimes I dreamed of two little girls in there, vicious ones who would pinch me in my sleep.
The bathroom was small with white and black subway tiles and a cheap shower curtain circling a claw-foot tub. In the mirrored medicine cabinet my mother kept a backup of her Valium, blue pills with V-shaped cutouts in the middle that I used to think were hearts. I’ve saved those, along with many of her other pills. The expiration dates are about twenty-five years old, but I’ve found they still work if you triple the dose.
Joe Sr. came downstairs. I was always having strange thoughts; I remember wondering if he’d stuffed a pair of my mother’s panties into his jacket pocket. She wore full-bottom underwear, often sheer, in dark colors like purple and mahogany. I inherited some of my mother’s allure, but it passed through a filter. She was old-fashioned sexy, pinup sexy. I have been hotel-room sexy, succubus sexy, too skinny to be remembered.
—All clear, he said.
—Thanks, Joe.
—If you feel nervous, anything at all, you give me a call, any time of night.
My mother nodded. She’d kicked off her shoes and was rubbing her ankle with the red-painted toes of the opposite foot.
After he left, the girlish smile left my mother’s face.
—It’s time for a bath, she said to me.
—Can we have cocoa?
—No cocoa. It’s bedtime. It’s been a long day.
—Is Grandma going to be okay?
—Yes.
My mother moved into the small kitchen, putting dishes away. She was angry and I didn’t understand why. I thought she should be worried, nervous. I’d expected we would cuddle and comfort each other.
—Why didn’t we go with Daddy? I asked, knowing it was the wrong question.
—I don’t know why. Go to bed.
—Mommy, please, I’ll have nightmares.
She shook her head at me. She said something in Italian about nightmares being unavoidable. I don’t want you to think she was cruel. But she didn’t hold anything back. She didn’t treat me like I was ten years old. My father loved me so much more. I always thought that. But the tragedy of my life is proof that he did not.
—I always have nightmares if you’re angry at me. Daddy would tell you to read me a story and make it better.
—Why isn’t your father here and do it, then?
—Because. Grandma.
—Go to bed!
—Don’t you love me, Mommy?
My mother turned to face me. I wasn’t going to get the answer I wanted. I remember the feeling inside my heart. It was shocking how cold she could be. As a child in rural Italy, she’d been very sick and her parents had put her in a sanatorium, hours away from the family home, where she was quarantined in a sick ward with other children, coughing blood and not getting outside. Nurses with masks treated her brusquely, washed her in ice water to curtail the infection. They left bowls of farina with lumps for her to eat. They didn’t care if she didn’t eat. For nearly a year she was in that hospital and her mother came to visit her only once. It was a long trip and they were very poor and my mother said she didn’t blame her. She accepted it without reservation. In their bedroom in New Jersey my mother had a shrine for the woman who left her in the sanatorium. She told me I didn’t understand how hard life could be. That I was lucky.
Silently she taught me that we are all monsters, we are all capable of monstrosity. Unforgettably and unforgivably, she taught me several days later that there is always a reason behind the monstrosity. So all my life I have never had to wonder, How did that thing happen? With a mother killing her toddler, with a girl texting her boyfriend into committing suicide, with a child blowing the priest. Other people wonder why. I know exactly why.