LITMIR.BIZ

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it out. But let me give you a hint. Buddy’s got everything here. We take care of each other. We’re family. He needs you like he needs a hole in the head. What’s he got to go to Manhattan for? You wanna take the kids away from me? I love those kids. They call me Mama. They hug me so tight sometimes I can’t breathe.

      We can work something out, I told her. Maybe Buddy and I could live here. Maybe find a house nearby . . .

      Buddy had hinted at this very plan and I had kiboshed it unequivocally. I’d lived in Rome and Paris and Bombay. I was going to live in Staten Island next to his sister?

      You’re full of shit, Angela said. Buddy told me he asked you and you said no.

      I didn’t. I never said no.

      Buddy’s a liar?

      No, he just doesn’t listen. You know, Angela, how he doesn’t listen. Think about it. It could be great, all of us together.

      She looked at me. I sensed that Joey was feeling bad for me. His hand wasn’t shaking so much anymore. I willed him to put down the gun but he didn’t. He just wasn’t gripping it so tight that his hand shook.

      Angela smiled. She was a beautiful girl. Black hair, skin like pearls dipped in milk. The first time I met her, she had on a one-shoulder dress and I swear I wanted to put my tongue against her skin and lick, it was that luscious.

      I fell for that once, Angela said, with that other rat bastard. We were like sisters. Then look what I had to do. She took everything, but at least we got the kids. Joey and I took care of her, didn’t we, Joey? But just my luck, we get rid of one son-of-a-bitch and Buddy finds another. He’s a real pain in my ass sometimes, my brother.

      Angela, be honest, Buddy’s only here with you because—

      Because what?

      She didn’t look so beautiful right now. I shut my mouth.

      Because he had nowhere else to go, I wanted to say.

      Buddy’s mother always said she was sorry she gave up the tenement apartment on Spring Street. She didn’t call it a tenement, though. She called it her “nice apartment.” From Buddy I knew it was three rooms in the back, facing the alley, tub in the kitchen, and everyone waiting in the hallway when one of them took a bath on Saturdays. Tenements weren’t Buddy’s style and neither was Florence Street, from what I could see. There were more trees on Spring Street.

      Joey had been “fixing up” the house on Florence Street ever since he’d gotten out. Joey was handy, he had what they called “hands of gold,” which he seemed to use for ripping things out and never putting them back in, the bathroom on the second floor, for instance. We’re getting a new bathroom, Angela had told me, but they’d been using the one in the basement for three years while Joey moved on to other projects, such as busting up the stairs so everyone had to walk up on a wooden ramp like the cart horses in the stable on Thompson Street.

      And then there was Joey’s wall. The first time Buddy took me to Florence Street, Joey was in the front yard mixing cement. There were piles of boulders, different sizes, and Joey was using them to build a wall. The kids were carrying over the smaller ones and Joey was fitting them on top of one another and side by side and cementing them in place. The wall belonged on an English country estate. The wall belonged on meadows and hills and dales. The wall was beautiful and ridiculous. The house was small and ugly and sat on a small and ugly lot, and then all around it, not more than ten feet out, was this magnificent stone wall that each time I visited got higher and higher, until it was starting to look like a rampart. Buddy laughed about it. He called it Joey’s therapy. But I have to be honest, it gave me the creeps.

      I’m tired of talking, Angela said to me. Get out of the car.

      No, no. Leave her in the car until I’m ready, Joey said.

      We can’t leave her in the car. We’ll put her in the basement while you set things up.

      The basement? Did you ever carry dead weight up stairs? Joey said. I’m no Hercules and for sure, she ain’t no lightweight.

      I let the insult pass. I’m always surprised when people say mean things about me. As I said, I was always thinking people liked me when they really didn’t give a shit. But all that aside, what the hell were they talking about?

      I pulled at my wrists, but when I did, the rope tightened around my neck. I was afraid I would pee myself. I thought I’d bring up using the bathroom but I wanted to wait for the right time. Maybe I could get away then, make a noise, maybe I had a chance. The kids would hear, the old lady—deaf as she was—the dog, the neighbors not twenty feet away, someone.

      Angela smiled. She can walk, she said. She can walk up the basement stairs. It’ll be dark.

      You’re kidding me, Joey said.

      I always believed in you, Joey. Even with that crazy wall. I always believed in you. That’s why I stuck, through thick and thin.

      I have to go to the bathroom, I said.

      You wanna take her? Joey said.

      Let her piss herself, Angela told him. She looked me straight in the face. Whatta we care?

      Can you guess the rest? Joey put the gun to my temple. Angela duct-taped my mouth. She checked the rope around my wrists and my neck. She pulled me out of the car and down the basement steps. Joey wanted to put out a mat so I could lie down. Angela said no. I’d piss on it, remember I had asked to go to the bathroom? And then she’d have to throw it out and Clorox the place. She’ll be lying down forever, Angela said. Just like the other one.

      In the end, they put some blankets on the floor and pushed me down. I could smell dog on the wool but I was glad just to lie there and close my eyes. I heard them leave. I watched the light go away as the sun went down. I heard the scrape of the trowel. I heard one of Buddy’s kids call out to Joey, asking him why he was working on the wall, it was nighttime. I think I slept. And then they were pulling me up. Angela and Joey. And walking me up the stairs.

      There was no moon. I wondered what Buddy would think—if he would think that, like his first wife, I had just up and disappeared. Gotten cold feet? Left him at the altar? And the kids . . . would they feel abandoned again? Miss me? I noticed when I got close to the wall how wide it was, wide enough to lie down on. The wall was different heights in different parts. I wondered how high it would go in the end. I realized I would never know.

      Angela took my arm and walked me to a place where the wall was low, maybe four feet, and she made me lie down. I felt the stones that jutted through the layer of cement hard against my back, my shoulders, my head, and then she picked up a boulder, so big that it blocked my vision. It would have blocked out the moon if there had been one in the sky, and she brought it down with all her strength.

      Buddy came home early the next morning. When he woke up, he took his coffee into the yard where Joey was working on the wall. The kids were rolling stones. They were still in their pajamas.

      It’s really coming along, Buddy said. This wall is going to be here after we’re all dead, Joey. It’s like the goddamn Colosseum.

      The phone rang and someone inside picked it up. Is that for me? Buddy shouted.

      You expecting a call? Joey said.

      I thought it might be Annemarie. She never showed up last night.

      She ever done that before?

      No, Buddy said. Never.

       MOTHER LOVE

      Piero would ride in a basket that his mother had set upon her head. She would cover him with a white cloth and go walking in the streets of the city.

      From the basket he would put out his hand and snatch off the hats of the men passing by. The men would look around and they would see a woman with a basket on her head, a basket covered with a white cloth.

      These were his beginnings.

      Piero and his mother were everything in the world

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