The Black Madonna (20 page)

“Did you children bring suits?” Sylvia asked. The smile on her face looked pained. It seemed to Jumbo like her mouth was paralyzed.

“Swimsuits,” Mr. Bernstein, or Harvey, as he insisted Jumbo call him, explained. “The pool's heated. You could go for a dip.”

“Oh, I don't know, Mother,” Judy said.

“I'd love to go for a swim,” Jumbo said. He was a wonderful swimmer, and a wonderful dancer, the myth of all fat men, light on his delicate feet always shod in the best of shoes. He turned to his beloved. “Gee, honey, you shoulda told me there was a pool.”

Sylvia cringed just slightly at the word
honey
but her smile stayed put and she got up to serve iced tea in tall glasses with little paper umbrellas. “Just like a nightclub,” Jumbo said to her when she handed him a glass.

Sylvia hated him. She had hated him on sight. She hated him with every breath, every pore. She could see the circle of sweat forming under the arms of his jacket. It was hot in the yard. She would have suggested he take off his jacket but the sight of a sweaty fat man in shirtsleeves was more than she could bear at this moment. Sylvia Bernstein hated fat. She tolerated a slight potbelly in Harvey, who only really enjoyed his food at lunchtime on Grand Street, away from Sylvia. He had the genes, she told him, to be a balloon and he had passed them on to Judy. Sylvia had mercilessly kept them in check as best she could but she couldn't be everywhere. She looked her daughter over carefully. She had definitely put on weight since the last time she saw her. Sylvia wasn't surprised, seeing the company she was keeping.

C
ome help me in the kitchen, darling,” she said to Judy. “Let the men chat.”

Judy didn't have to ask but she did. “What do you think?” she said when they were alone.

“About what, dearest?”

“Jumbo. What do you think? Isn't it sweet how he got all dressed up to meet you? I told him it was casual but he wore a suit and tie anyway.”

“He seems like a nice boy.”

“He's not a boy, Mother. He's a grown man and I'm going to marry him.”

Sylvia panicked; her smile cracked. “But Judy, who is he? You don't know anything about him. He could be the Boston Strangler.”

“They caught the Boston Strangler.”

“Well, I still think you should be careful, that's all. You waited this long.”

Jumbo came through the kitchen, Harvey behind him. “Your father's got a bathing suit for me, honey. I'm gonna go for a swim before we eat. Otherwise I gotta wait an hour. I don't wanna get a cramp and drown in your pool, Sylvia.”

Sylvia thought that was a great idea, Jumbo drowning, but she retrieved her smile, weaker than before. With her lips pressed together, no teeth, she glared at Harvey, who excused himself and disappeared. Sylvia kept arranging the plates on a tray along with the little sandwiches she had had catered in town, cucumbers and watercress, the crusts carefully cut off and the bagels and Nova and cream cheese and blintzes and pickles Harvey had brought from the city for their lunch with their daughter's fiancé. She asked Judy to set the table outside, explaining that she had to run upstairs for a minute. She found Harvey in the bathroom. She could set the clock by his digestion. She knew where he'd be.

“He's a nice boy, Sylvia,” Harvey said to her through the door. “He looks like he's going to enjoy your lunch.”

“Be honest for once, Harvey. He's an aberration and we don't even have to go beyond his physical appearance.”

“He
is
a big boy.”

“He's a fat boy, a big fat boy. Do you know one of my friends that has a fat son-in-law? How will I take him to the club?”

“Listen, he's a hard worker. Judy says he works two shifts at the bar. There's always room for a boy like that. Let's face it, Sylvia. She's our only daughter. If this is the man to make her happy, we can help out a little.”

Sylvia bit a fingernail. She sat at the edge of the bed, carefully smoothing her knockoff Pucci top under her buttocks so it wouldn't be wrinkled when she stood up. “You know, Elaine Himmelfarb's daughter married a Hare Krishna. She had to sit cross-legged on the floor in an orange robe at their wedding. And Harriet's daughter married some mountain man she met in Wyoming when she was conducting AA meetings on an Indian reservation.” Sylvia heard the toilet flush and then the water running. Harvey opened the bathroom door. “So tell me,” she said, “where you found swimming trunks for an elephant?”

T
hey went downstairs together. Sylvia was feeling better. In the end, it was Judy's life. Sylvia had her own. They could set certain conditions: a rabbi for the wedding, the children raised Jewish. At least the holidays wouldn't conflict. It wasn't like they were the first parents to put up with this sort of thing. When Sylvia started to think, she had to admit that it was definitely a trend. Inappropriate matches. She was sure it had to do with all this education. You never knew who your children would meet today when they went out into the world.

Jumbo was sitting at the table with Judy. They were waiting, he said, for the Bernsteins to come down. Sylvia softened. She loved good manners. Jumbo made sure Sylvia was served first. Judy thought he was even charming Sylvia a little bit. He relaxed and slathered cream cheese on half his bagel, piled it high with Nova Scotia, and added the top. He pressed it down carefully and bit in.

This wasn't so bad, Jumbo decided. He imagined every other Sunday by the pool, maybe a spin in the Mustang. All he had to do was win over Antoinette and he was set. He could tell Judy's parents liked him. He looked around. They were doing pretty good and she was an only child. He would have married her with nothing but hey, money didn't hurt. He imagined the satin and lace
busta
at their wedding stuffed with envelopes. He might even be able to square it with Fat Eddie Fingers and get the hell out of Benvenuto's. Jumbo reached for a bialy and covered it with butter.

“You didn't have your swim?” Sylvia said. Jumbo was wearing his shirt and the bathing trunks Harvey had given him. Sylvia recognized them as the extra-large pair Harvey had ordered for a window display when he added a line of swimwear.

“Nah, I decided to wait, but look at this, the suit fits perfect.” Jumbo snapped the waistband to show Sylvia.

Harvey smiled. “I told him he could have them,” he said to Sylvia, “or,” and here he winked and touched Judy's arm, “maybe just leave them here for when he comes over.”

Sylvia smiled, too. “They fit nicely . . . Alfso,” she said. “That is your real name, Judy's told us?”

“Sylvia, you can call me whatever you want, just don't call me late for dinner.”

Judy slapped Jumbo's arm. “Stop teasing,” she said. Sylvia teeheed a little bit. Harvey guffawed. Jumbo stood up and pushed back his chair. He walked to the edge of the pool and began to unbutton his shirt. The Bernsteins sat watching him. He turned to face them. “You save me if I get a cramp, okay, Jude?” he said to Judy.

Sylvia looked up at him, shading her eyes with her hand. Her smile tightened until her mouth was a slit the size of a paper clip as Jumbo pushed the shirt off his shoulders, exposing his mammoth chest, smooth and hairless and unmarked as a baby's bottom, except for two words tattooed in inch-high blue letters over each one of his nipples. The right read
SWEET
and the left,
SOUR
.

Sylvia's eyes rolled to the back of her head. She pitched forward and before they could catch her, she fell with a splash into the pool.

I
t's a fucking mess,” Jumbo told Nicky when he came to see him at Benvenuto's to find out how it went.

“Whatta you mean?”

“I went out there to Long Island to meet her parents. She insisted.”

“And?”

“
Marrone,
Nicky, they got money. You had to see this house. Swimming pool, the mother all dressed up like Paddy's pig. I mean, you know she wasn't sweating over no hot stove. I'm a little, you know, kinda thrown for a loop with all this. Judy coulda told me something, given me a clue.”

“So?”

“So, wait. We're by the pool and they were nice, you know? Judy's old lady was a little snooty but I know how to treat old broads. Forgive me for calling Judy's mother a broad, but she wasn't my idea of a mother. I would never call your mother a broad even though she hates me.”

“Go ahead, Jumbo. I'm getting the picture here.”

“Okay, so, they're liking me even. ‘Call me Sylvia,' the mother says. The father gives me a bathing suit so I can go for a swim.”

“He had a bathing suit for you?”

“Yeah, he's in the business. He had this suit, fit perfect, was even a little big if you can believe it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, so it's all going good until I take off my shirt. Those fucking tattoos, Nicky. I forgot about the fucking tattoos. Sylvia takes one look at my tits and goes down like a redwood. Boom! She passes out, rolls in the friggin' pool. Stop laughing, Nicky. This is serious.”

“So what happened?”

“What happened, what could happen? We got her up and Harvey got her upstairs and dried her off and put her in bed. He said it was food poisoning. He blamed the cream cheese but I know it was those fucking tattoos. Am I nuts? Who gets tattoos like that? It just wasn't a good start, you know? It wasn't a good introduction.”

“Well, forget the mother. What did Judy say?”

“She says don't worry. But now she wants to meet
my
mother. She ain't taking no for an answer.”

“Well, Jesus, Jumbo, she's right.”

“But my mother don't know nothing yet.”

“Well, you better say something.”

“I thought you and Salvatore was gonna help me.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“I don't know. Voodoo? Maybe Salvatore can get Magdalena to do something?”

“What about my mother?” Nicky laughed.

“Give me a break, Nicky. I'm looking for love here, not destruction. I'm cursed. I really am cursed.”

“Sally said he'd be down tonight. His wife's up in Connecticut with her family and he's got to do work so he's in town. We could have dinner.”

“Good idea. Three heads are better than two.“

T
hey met, Jumbo and Salvatore and Nicky. They started at the Kettle of Fish on Bleecker Street, where Pauly Rizzo worked behind the bar and bought them all a drink. They walked over to the Ninth Circle and listened to the folk music and Jimmy Burp, who worked behind that bar, bought them a drink and on around the Village and then uptown where the neighborhood boys had fanned out to work the nightclubs and bars. Jumbo knew all of them, from Domnick in Max's Kansas City on up to Pauly in the Copa. By 2
A.M.
, they were back downtown at the Page 3, to watch men in gowns sing torch songs on the stage.

The last stop was a place that didn't have a name, deep down on Broadway where they checked you out through a peephole before they opened the door and the men wore dresses and the women wore pin-striped suits and they all wore makeup as garish as a drunk's imagination.

N
icky woke up the next morning and couldn't remember how he'd gotten home. It made him so nervous that he left his apartment to come back down to the neighborhood and sit in the last pew in St. Anthony's Church on Sullivan Street before he went to his mother, who made him drink hot water and lemon juice and said terrible things about his ex-wife Gina.

Jumbo slept the sleep of the dead. His mother beat egg and milk into a soup dish, dipped a loaf of Wonder bread, slice by slice, into the mixture, and fried the slices one by one in a pan of butter. She stacked the pieces neatly into a pile just the way Jumbo liked his French toast, soft and wet in the middle, dripping with butter and syrup. Antoinette could smell the alcohol coming through Jumbo's pores when she went into the narrow bedroom to wake him up but it only made her sigh. Every once in a while Antoinette expected her boy to let off a little steam. As long as he ended up in his bed and her kitchen she could forgive him anything.

O
ut on Long Island Judy's mother hoped her daughter's affection for “the Italian from the city” (Sylvia had buried her Bronx roots long ago) would end with time. It wasn't about money, she told Harvey. It was about class. Jumbo had none.

Harvey rubbed Sylvia's freckled shoulders. They were spotted with black and brown dots from her bathing beauty days at Raven Hall in Coney Island, “the world's largest saltwater pool,” where Sylvia would stretch out next to old women from Eastern Europe who sunned naked in the rooftop solarium, their bodies brown all over except for two narrow half moons at the backs of their thighs that their sagging asses had hidden from the sun.

Harvey dug his fingers into the muscles at the base of Sylvia's neck and told her that this should be the worst they ever had to worry about. Italians made beautiful babies, he said, which was the last thing Sylvia wanted to hear, and when Judy called with the news, Sylvia blamed Harvey, convinced his words had jinxed their only child.

“From your mouth to God's ears,” she told him and took to her bed. The blinds were drawn, her bridge club was left looking for a fourth. Harvey closed the store on Grand Street and went on suicide watch. He sat by Sylvia's bed alternately holding her hand and patting her leg. He tried not to fall asleep in the chair he had pulled close to the bed but his eyelids drooped and he would wake up stiff and bent and go down to the kitchen only to make Sylvia coffee. She refused to eat and drank the coffee black.

Secretly Harvey was pleased. He thought a grandchild, even a half-Italian grandchild, was a blessing. And just this morning, Judy had promised him they would raise it Jewish.

J
umbo's reaction to Judy's news was not so far from Sylvia's. If he could have fit himself out the window that faced the back alley, he would have jumped. He knew from Matty J's experience that any attempt to fling himself from the window facing Spring Street would never work. At the first sight of him, and Jumbo would be sighted, between the time and effort it would take to squeeze himself out onto the sill, and the pigeons he would send flapping off the window ledges, half the neighborhood would be in his house pulling him to safety. The other half would be standing in the street looking up, hoping in their heart of hearts that he would jump or fall or in some way complete the drama he'd started before the cops came and put in their two cents.

When Nicky called to see how he was doing, Jumbo cried into the phone. He begged Nicky to come by and when Nicky did, that afternoon, Jumbo brought him into the men's room at Benvenuto's and locked the door. “You know, Nicky, if Luca Benvenuto comes by and finds us in here with the door locked he's gonna think . . . you know what he's gonna think? He's a small-minded guy.”

“Then what are we doing in here?”

“I don't give a shit what he thinks about me, but you're a detective. You gotta worry about these things. I want you to know what you're getting into.”

“Jumbo, what is it?”

“What am I gonna do about Judy?”

“Whatta you wanna do?”

“Kill myself.”

“Besides that.”

“Nicky, would I drag you over here if I knew?”

“Marry the girl, Jumbo. Isn't that what you want?”

“You're forgetting about Antoinette. My mother, Nicky. She's gonna kill me. She never even met this girl. How am I gonna hit her with this?”

Nicky shrugged. “Antoinette will come around. One fat baby and you're home free.”

“What makes you think I'd have a fat baby?”

“Unlock the door before Benvenuto comes by, would you?”

A
ntoinette was having serious suspicions that something was not right with her son. He had started picking his underwear up off the floor and making his bed and sometimes even putting his plate in the sink, not normal behavior for a boy as coddled as the crown prince of Austria. Antoinette, not the best of housekeepers, noticed these things.

And his appetite was down. Antoinette was a brilliant cook; she held her reputation even in a neighborhood brimming with brilliant cooks, and she very carefully noted when someone did not eat, or in Jumbo's case devour, her culinary efforts. Just last Sunday, she had made a
bonsette,
stuffing the pocket of the veal shoulder with egg and bread crumbs and parsley and cheese, sewing it closed with a needle and white thread, breathing in the fragrant steam when she took it out of the oven, before she sliced it into thick pieces.

Jumbo had nibbled. Rosina was the one who couldn't stand it anymore. “Jumbo, what's wrong with you?” she asked him with a poke in the ribs, and a red flag went up for Antoinette. She looked around at the round pink faces of the others: Albina, Raffaella, Angelina, and Filomena. They all remained with their forks in midair and then Antoinette knew. If her girls noticed, it wasn't her babying him. It was serious.

She kept quiet until they gathered together that Monday for coffee, the time of day when they all sat in Antoinette's kitchen, their children put to nap on couches and beds and chairs, the last moments they had together before their husbands came home, before they had to go home and cook dinner.

“Something's wrong with your brother,” Antoinette told them.

It was Filomena who twisted her mouth to one side and said, “We've been through this, Mama. I'm telling you. Jumbo's in love.”

“Why d'you think that?” Antoinette said. “I only wish he would find a nice girl. I'm not gonna be here forever. You girls got your own families.” Antoinette put her hand to her heart. “I know, I know how you feel about your brother, but you gotta think about your kids. They have to come first.”

Filomena pushed against her sister Albina's elbow and the two of them smiled and let Antoinette's sighs settle into the air fragrant with garlic and oil. “He does have a girl, Mama,” Albina said.

“And it's about time,” Angelina chimed in. Rosina sat to Angelina's left and she pushed at her sister's elbow.

Antoinette sat down, heavily, carefully, in the vinyl kitchen chair that barely contained her. “What makes you say that? If he had a girl he'd bring her home to meet the family, no? If he was serious?” Antoinette shook her head. She got up and started to make more coffee. “I think you're
pazze.
All of you. Jumbo had a girl, he would tell me, or somebody would.”

“Times change, Mama. You think this neighborhood knows everything.”

“Pshew . . . I can name ten people who would give their eyeteeth to let me know something like that. Besides, if your brother had a girl, wouldn't he say something? Jumbo and I are like this,” and Antoinette held up her hand, the second and third fingers intertwined.

“Just tell her, for God's sake,” Raffaella said.

“What? Tell me what?”

“He's got a girl, Mama. Tony Four-Heads saw him uptown in Jilly's. That's where he met her.”

“So, Jumbo goes with a lot of girls. Nice-looking boy like him. Why not?”

“This is one girl, Mama. She's a Jew, a schoolteacher from Long Island. He's been all over uptown with her.”

Antoinette backed against the wall and steadied herself on the tin cabinet where the toaster sat under a floral cover that matched the doily underneath. She moved a chair out from the table and fell into it. “
Madonna mia!
Whatta'm I gonna do? Rosina, Albina, Filomena, Angelina, Raffaella . . .
aiutami!
” Antoinette started to breathe heavy. She pulled her dress up and the girls rushed to undo the garters that held her stockings over her knees and cut off her circulation. They fanned her with their handkerchiefs. They pressed a cool washcloth to her sweat-beaded forehead and they held her hands while she cried and raved and they watched the clock. They had to be in their houses by five to have dinner on the table on time.

Antoinette calmed down, sobbing into her hands, wiping her nose with a fist like a giant child. “You go,” she told her daughters. “If I need you, I'll yell in the hall.” They left in tandem, all five of them, asses and arms and knees bumping against the table and chairs and cabinets that cluttered the kitchen that was big for a tenement kitchen but small for the Mangiacarne sisters. Fifteen minutes of confusion and they were gone, outside in the hallway, dragging kids and bundles up and down the broken marble stairs of 196 Spring Street, and Antoinette was left in her kitchen, alone with the news that her baby boy was seeing a girl, a Jew, and he was keeping it secret from her.