—Mimi, my mother said, what is it?
My father shook his head.
—I have to go, he said.
My mother stood and went to him. I heard him, I heard what he said. As usual, everybody underestimated how tuned in I was.
—My mother was raped, he said.
—What!
My mother, with her accent, had a way of saying that word. It sounded like waht! It had an exclamation mark even when she didn’t mean for one.
I saw that Joseph Sr. heard him, too. My parents often spoke Italian to each other, specifically when they didn’t want someone else to hear them, and I did wonder why my father hadn’t communicated the news in Italian. Perhaps the word in Italian, stupro, sickened him too much. The Italian word was more carnal, more visual. Rape, by contrast, sounded like something you might eventually lock away in an aluminum drawer.
I listened as they spoke for another minute. The details were filmy. I merged them with my own experience of my grandparents’ house to create the scene. My grandparents lived in a part of East Orange that used to be a nice neighborhood but now had weeds growing in the cracks of the street. In the middle of the afternoon my grandmother let a man into the house, a man she thought was a technician of some sort, and he raped her on the floral couch where their Doberman regularly pissed. He left with her wallet, her wedding ring, and her gold crucifix. My grandmother was seventy-two years old at the time. She wasn’t slim and she wore gaudy makeup on her fleshy face. Peach lipstick that settled into the wrinkles of her lips, powdery blue eyeshadow on the withered lids of her eyes. Their whole house smelled like urine. The rapist struck her once, hard, on the face. The Doberman and the German shepherd were outside, in the fenced yard. I wondered about the cats. They had five cats in that house. She had a bruise under one eye. She’d cleaned herself up before the police came. She’d inquired with the police as to whether there was a way they could keep it from her husband. My grandfather was a cold, small, stern, racist man. In retrospect I believe he was evil. He called Black men coloreds in polite company and worse in his own home. My grandmother’s legs were big; her calves were like columns. She wore nude pantyhose, even in the summer, which made the skin on her legs look the color of uncooked chicken breasts, an unsettling pinkish white.
My father would be driving the two hours to New Jersey alone. He told my mother he would be back by morning. He came toward the table, kissed me on the forehead. He left his American Express on the table; my mother didn’t carry any cards of her own. He didn’t say goodbye to Joseph Sr. and Evelyn. I’d never seen him care less for other people.
After he left, Joseph Sr. asked my mother what had happened. Evelyn leaned forward like her type does, lovers of gossip.
My mother sketched the story quietly, saying the word rape even quieter, trying to make sense of it herself.
Joseph Sr. let out something like a laugh. A disbelieving guffaw.
—Who in the hell would want to rape an old bag!
Evelyn smiled despite herself and said, Hush, Joe!
My mother somewhat nodded, sharing the energy of the table’s disbelief. I felt she should have taken me home, walked away from these monsters. But she didn’t. She took out another cigarette. She gazed at the fireplace. Joseph Sr. lit her cigarette. Joseph Jr. selected from his rucksack a different palm-size game.
The waitress brought the big charcoal tray of our food. There was some talk about my father’s prime rib, and my mother told Joe and Evelyn they could have it wrapped and take it back to their house. Evelyn wondered if they should send it back to the kitchen; it was too rare for her taste. I looked up at the big bull over the mantel, his horns and teeth that, until recently, had the power to make me wet my pants. I stared at him and wished he were as real as I used to think he was. I prayed for him to animate suddenly and rip the rest of his body through the wall and gore Joseph Sr., make a rhubarb pie out of his wide dentist chest.
—Eat your food, my mother said to me. That was all she said to me for the rest of the meal.
I still remember the cheap hash marks on my slab of filet mignon and the lobster tail beside it. I knocked over the metal dish of clarified butter, but nobody saw, and I knew I couldn’t ask for another.
14
ALL THE NEXT DAY I hoped that Alice would come. I stared at the fridge where I’d lined up the Tecates. I felt like a teenage girl with a crush.
When the bell jingled, I almost dropped a cup I was washing. But it wasn’t her. It was River with Kurt the dog at his side. Meeting Alice had muted my desire for him.
—Whoa, he said. You work here?
—It appears so.
—What happened to Natalia?
—She went into politics.
He smiled and looked at me like I was crazy. Jack had been better at understanding sarcasm. But River was better-looking.
—Is it okay that Kurt’s in here?
—Of course. How’s he doing?
—Terrific. Aren’t you, boy?
The dog sat and lowered his scruffy chin. He was at once regal and a little silly but, above all, loyal and smart. I felt that if I had been the one to rescue that animal, he’d be peeing in the cracks of my uneven planks and whining by the
