The Brotherhood of the Grape (14 page)

T
HREE NIGHTS
later I dreamed of my father’s funeral. Miss Quinlan was at the graveside across from Mario, and they were smiling intimately. Nearby was a hearse drawn by four black horses adorned with silver harnesses and white plumes. My wife and sons were in the driver’s seat, smirking at my mother as she spaded earth into the grave, and a score of mourners chatted and laughed without reverence, like revelers at a picnic. I was only an observer, but my presence was not in the dream. I was sodden with the residual effect as I wakened at ten o’clock and walked into the kitchen and poured coffee. Through the window I saw my mother in the backyard, throwing grain to her chickens. The phone rang.

It was Dr. Maselli calling from the hospital.

“Have you seen your father this morning?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“Not anymore. I just came from his room. His clothes are gone and so is he.”

I laughed. “How long has he been gone?”

“He left between seven and eight this morning.”

I laughed again.

“What the hell’s so funny?” the doctor said. “The old cocker hasn’t had his insulin this morning.”

“Is that bad?”

“If he stops to gas up in some saloon it could be another coma.”

“Maybe he’s on a bus back to San Elmo.”

“Better check and see. Try the Onyx and the Café Roma.”

I asked if he had tried any of the saloons near the hospital.

“I’ve got patients here. I can’t leave now.”

“How about the police?”

“What for? He’s not a criminal, he’s just a goddamn fool.”

“What do I do if I find him?”

“If he’s in San Elmo, get him to my office. I’ll be there in an hour. Or put him in a car and bring him back to the hospital.”

I dressed quickly and slipped out of the house and into the cool and lucid morning, fresh upon my skin.

My old man! What a treasure he was, what excitement he kicked up! That was his genius, a talent for shaking up the small world in which he lived. I walked quickly toward town, laughing quietly, so pleased with him. He might die, but what of that? Dostoyevsky was dead, yet very much alive in my heart. He had come to me like the grace of God, a flash of lightning that illumined my life. My father had that same iridescence, a nimbus around me, my own flesh and blood, a poet asserting his will to live.

I stopped at the Onyx Bar first. Art Pinto was behind the counter, serving beer to a couple of brakemen. I asked if he had seen my father.

“Not anymore, Henry. He ain’t allowed.”

The Café Roma was deserted except for Frank Mascarini, polishing glasses behind the bar. He had not seen my father in days.

I asked, “Where’s Zarlingo this morning, and Lou Cavallaro?”

“They don’t get here till noon.”

I walked out. The day was warming up. Standing in the shade under the awning of the Leroy Hotel, I pondered the problem. Where would a man leaving the Auburn Hospital find a drink? Obviously, the nearest saloon. That had been my hunch in the first place. He wouldn’t waste time waiting for a bus to take him back to his hometown if he was in flight from the hospital. Chances were he’d duck into the first saloon in sight. He had to be in Auburn somewhere, in a saloon on Chop Suey Street not far from the hospital. I walked up the street to the Hertz people and rented a Chevy for the drive to Auburn.

Chop Suey Street was a block long, the Chinese section of Auburn. It consisted of six saloons squeezed among the crumbling frame and brick buildings. I parked at the end of the old, elm-lined block and entered an establishment called the Silverado. It was cool and dark inside and fragrant with the vapors of beer. The young bartender paid no attention to me.

“I’m looking for my father,” I explained. “Old guy, about my size. Seventy-six years old, wearing khaki pants and shirt. Has a mustache.”

He nodded toward the dark interior.

“Take your pick. We got several answering that description.”

Back in the gloom I walked among the tables where a dozen old guys sat in somnolent silence, sipping beer and sherry. It surprised me how much they all looked like my father, the same gnarled hands, the same scuffed, turned-up shoes, the same battered hats, the same opaque eyes staring into nowhere. Nick was not among them, nor was he in any of the other bars along the street.

I walked back to the rented car and drove a few blocks to the Auburn downtown area. He wasn’t in the bus depot, and the cocktail lounges along the main street were too fancy for his taste and I didn’t stop to look for him there. Instead I drove to the hospital, wondering doubtfully whether he had returned.

Miss Quinlan and another nurse were at the desk on the second floor as I stepped from the elevator. Miss Quinlan was talking into the phone. She was startled to see me.

“It’s your father,” she said, handing me the phone.

I took the phone.

“Hello, Papa. Where are you?”

He hung up.

I cradled the phone and asked Miss Quinlan if she knew where my father had called from.

“Some place on the highway. A winery.”

“The Angelo Musso winery?”

“That’s the place.”

“How did he sound?”

“I think he’s been drinking.”

“Does he need help?”

“Without insulin he’s in desperate need of help.”

“Why did he call, Miss Quinlan? What did he want?”

She hesitated. “He asked me to come out there and meet him.”

“What for?”

“He wanted to show me the vineyard.” It made her smile. “The old rascal…”

I spun around and started to leave, but what she had said troubled me, and I turned back and drew her away from the desk and the other nurse standing there.

“Miss Quinlan,” I said. “That ‘old rascal’ remark, what did you mean by it?”

She studied me with wide sky-blue eyes, carefully sorting out her answer: “Last winter I had a patient on a kidney machine, a fine old gentleman, ninety-two years old. The dear man died in my arms, with his hand in my panties. You know what I mean, Mr. Molise?”

My libido began to hiss and a spell of lust fell around me, heat in my throat and knees, my eyes diving into the blue of hers, the heavy breasts pulling me toward her; her white neck softly turned and I wondered irrationally if her pussy was blond too, and I shuddered, ashamed, wondering, my God, what am I thinking at a time like this?

“Miss Quinlan,” I groped. “Is that why my father ran away from the hospital?”

“It was the insulin injection. He wouldn’t take it. Orinase—the kind you take in a pill—it didn’t work on your father. He had to have the insulin by hypodermic, and it made him climb the walls, he hated it so.”

I thanked her and asked her to get in touch with Dr. Maselli. “Tell him my father’s at Angelo Musso’s winery. Maselli knows all about it.”

I
T WAS TEN
minutes down Highway 80 to the turnoff to Angelo’s place, then half a mile up the hill to the winery. Circling the driveway at the rear of the house, I came upon Joe Zarlingo’s Datsun camper. It didn’t surprise me. (Later I learned that after telephoning Zarlingo from his hospital room that morning, my father had dressed and calmly walked out of the main hospital entrance, past the reception desk and out the front door, waiting on the hospital steps for Joe and his friends to whisk him away.)

The midday heat grabbed me by the neck as I stepped from the Chevy and crossed to a gathering of men under the grape arbor. The six were at the long picnic table, Angelo at one end, my father at the other.

Drooping majestically, my old man slumped deep in a wicker chair, wistfully drunk, his arms limp over the chair arms. He was like an ancient Roman patrician waiting for the blood to drain from his slitted wrists. Across from one another on benches were the four galoots from the Café Roma—Zarlingo, Cavallaro, Antrilli and Benedetti. They were all bombed but under control, swigging wine from thick tumblers. Jugs of Chianti and trays of food were spread over the long table: salami, sausages, prosciutto, bread and anise cakes. They had feasted long and well beneath the hot vine, and so had swarms of stunned bees, staggering over the food and floundering in puddles of wine, while hundreds droned mournfully among overripe muscats hanging from the vines.

Not a word was spoken as I came among them. It was as if I was of no importance, a nuisance, another bee. I moved quietly behind my father’s chair and put my hands on his shoulders, his soft flesh drawing away, his bones so near to the touch.

“It’s me, Papa.”

He raised his head.

“What time is it?”

“Time for you to go back to the hospital.”

“No, sir. Not me.”

“You need your insulin.”

He shook his head.

“Stop picking on your father,” Zarlingo said. “Sit down, have a drink. Be quiet. Enjoy the party.”

“I’m taking him back to the hospital.”

“That’s up to him.” He reached out and touched my father’s hand. “You wanna go back to the hospital, Nick?”

“No, Joe. It’s nice here. Quiet.”

The voiceless Angelo made a cackling sound, motioning me to come to his side, beguiling me with a toothless smile. As I moved toward him, he began to write something on a pad with a pencil, writing swiftly, slashing the paper, tearing off the sheet and handing it to me.

It was legible, but it was Italian.

“Can’t read it,” I said, handing it back.

Benedetti snatched it from my grasp. “Let me see it.”

He studied the writing for a moment, then nodded approvingly at the old man. “Right,” he said to Angelo. “You are always right, Angelo.”

“What does it say?” I asked.

“It says, ‘It is better to die of drink than to die of thirst.’”

I looked from him to the old winemaker.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, staring at Angelo’s crumbling eyes. “I don’t understand.”

Quickly Angelo was writing again, another swift sentence, passing the sheet to Benedetti, who translated once more:

“It is better to die among friends than to die among doctors.”

It brought applause, a clapping of hands, glasses held aloft and drained in a toast, even a wave from my father, who was beyond the point of understanding anything.

Encouraged, Angelo began to write once more. There was only one course left for me. I drew back my father’s chair and tried to lift him, my arms around his chest. He fought me, feebly but in anger, squirming back into the chair. The paisani stared. They would not help me.

I said, “Please, someone, give me a hand. This man is very sick.”

They sat there like tombstones. I began to cry. Not from grief, not anguish for my father, but compassion for myself. How good I was. What a loyal, beautiful son! See me trying to save my father’s life. How proud I was of myself. What a decent human being I was!

I wept and pounded the table and the wine danced and spilled and the bees snarled. I tore my hair. I fell on my knees and clung to my father. “Come with me. Papa! You need care. You mustn’t die in this wretched place.”

His vague glance found me.

“Go home, kid. See what your mother wants.”

I got up in shame and disgust and sat on the bench, sobbing. I had this talent for crying. It had brought me many rewards through my life, and some trouble too. When your weaknesses are your strengths, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don’t know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears. I cried at my first communion. My tears broke Harriet down and she finally married me. Without tears I could never have seduced a woman, and with them I never failed. It has laid waste the hearts of women who disliked me, and who wanted to kill me afterward for succumbing. I cried through melancholy passages of my own writing. The older I got, the more I wept.

Now Zarlingo was affected, reaching across the table to press my hand. “Take it easy, son,” he soothed. “Wipe your eyes, have a drink. Don’t worry about your father. He’s strong as an ox.”

I wiped my face and blew my nose. I forced down the wine. From the highway below came the wail of a siren, drawing closer, louder. I walked out to the driveway and saw a white ambulance streaking a trail of dust as it raced up Angelo’s private road. As it slowed I saw two white-clad attendants in the cab. Dr. Maselli was with them. They leaped to the ground.

“Where is he?” the doctor asked.

He followed me into the arbor and moved to my father’s side. Lifting the drooped head, he peeled back an eyelid. Removing a hypodermic from his kit, he filled it with a milky substance from a vial and injected it into my father’s arm. Angelo and the other brothers gathered around, watching. They moved aside as the attendants came up with a stretcher. They carefully eased my father upon the stretcher and lifted him off the ground. As they carried him toward the ambulance each of his friends murmured farewell.

“Ciao, Nicola, Buono fortuna.”

“Addio, amico mio.”

“Corragio, Nick.”

“Corragioso, Nicola.”

My father lay motionless, eyes closed. Even the hot sun failed to disturb his eyelids. Now Angelo came to his side with a straw-wrapped bottle of Chianti and placed it lengthwise beneath his arm. It brought a frown from Dr. Maselli. The stretcher was lifted into the ambulance and the door closed. As the white car drove away my father’s friends watched it churning dust toward the highway.

“He’s gonna be all right,” Zarlingo said.

“Sure he is,” Cavallaro agreed. “He’ll outlive us all.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Benedetti.

I got into the rented car and followed the ambulance.

For half an hour I waited on a bench in a hall outside the emergency room of the Auburn Hospital. When Dr. Maselli emerged, coatless, the look of death was upon him.

“He’s gone.”

“How, Doc? Why?”

“Cerebral hemorrhage. Swift, painless. A man couldn’t ask for a better way to die.”

As I turned to leave he asked, “Do you want me to tell your mother?”

“I’ll tell her.”

Down the hall in the pay station I telephoned Stella. She choked at the news and began to cry. We cried together for a long time, in each other’s arms over the telephone.

I said, “Will you tell Mama?”

“Oh, God!” she sobbed. “Oh, God.”

I hung up and walked out to the car in the parking lot. The waning day refused to cool and I was numb and unequal to the drive home to the agony of my mother and the empty space in the world now that my father was gone. Remembering the saloons along Chop Suey Street I thought of getting smashed, of losing myself in the semidarkness with those lonely old men peeling off their last days in one of those places.

As I started the car a nurse came down the hospital steps into the parking lot. It was Miss Quinlan. She was walking straight toward me carrying a white sweater, moving smoothly on low shoes, erect and clean and handsome, the sun behind her, piercing the space between her thighs. I stepped from the car and stood in her path. She paused and smiled.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said.

My eyes filled. I took her hands.

“Oh, Miss Quinlan, help me! I don’t know what to do, where to go. What shall I do, Miss Quinlan? I’m lost. I’m wretched!”

She put her arm around me.

“There, there, Mr. Molise. I know how you must feel, I know. It takes time, my dear man. You must be strong, for your father’s sake.”

All my life was tumbling around me, and I seized upon her with my hands and with my grief. “Oh, please, Miss Quinlan. Fuck me, please, please. Save me, fuck me!”

She freed herself and looked straight into my eyes, startled, hesitant.

“You ask me to do
that?
”

“Oh, yes, Miss Quinlan! I love you, I adore you! Have pity on me.”

She took a backward step and studied me.

“Well…it’s possible, I guess.”

“Please, dear, wonderful, beautiful Miss Quinlan!”

“I have to go to the supermarket first.”

“May I come with you? I’ll push your shopping cart.”

“If you like,” she smiled.

I smothered her hands with kisses and tears. I tried to fall on my knees but she held me up. “Don’t do that, Mr. Molise. Stand up, please.”

“Oh, thank you, angel. Thank you, thank you!”

We got in my car and drove to the market, my tears drying fast, Miss Quinlan at my side with her pretty nurse’s hat over her blond Nordic braids, her knees like pomegranates under her hose, tight together, prim, so ladylike.

How delicious she looked, walking down the market aisles, selecting purchases, dropping them into the shopping cart. I insisted on buying her a bottle of Scotch and a coconut cake and thick lamb chops, and when we went through the checkout stand I paid for the whole damn thing, just to hear her gasp with gratitude and call me crazy. We got to my car again and I opened the door for her, and her magnificent derriere floated past my eyes like the grace of God, like the Holy Ghost. My old man would have loved it; he would have pinched it for sure.

We drove to her apartment, which was above a garage two blocks from the hospital. I carried the groceries while she unlocked the door. That apartment! It was like entering a hospital emergency room. All white it was, white tile along the sink, a white Formica top to the bar separating the kitchen and the living room, and still more white covering the stainless steel tubular chairs and divan. The sharp odor of Lysol cut across the atmosphere. Everything was closeted, hidden—dishes, pots and pans. Even the toaster on the bar was concealed under something plastic. At Miss Quinlan’s instructions I put the sacks of groceries in the kitchen sink.

“You can undress here,” she said crisply. “Put your clothes on the sofa.”

She disappeared into the bedroom and locked the door. I pulled off my clothes and laid them out on the divan, neatly, in keeping with the austerity of the place.

As I finished, Miss Quinlan came from the bedroom. She was naked and not nearly as attractive as she had been in her nursing costume. Whereas I had conceived her a woman with spacious breasts, they were really almost nonexistent, sorry little dabs of flesh not much larger than a man’s. Then I saw the flesh marks of falsies, which didn’t disturb her in the least.

“Are we all undressed?” she said cheerfully, but with a professional intonation.

“Okay,” I answered, standing up, hiding my precious loins with two hands.

She smiled.

“My goodness, aren’t we modest.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “This way, please.”

I followed her into the bathroom, taking note of her drooping buttocks without the trimness her uniform created. The cleavage wasn’t fetching either. Both buttocks just hung there lazily, carelessly, and I began to feel that Miss Quinlan was at least sixty.

I stood by as she filled the washbasin and stirred up a solution of soapsuds. None of this invigorated my sword, or, as my father called it, my
spada
. In fact, it began a sullen regression, and when Miss Quinlan grasped it there was little to seize, and she shook it and called it a shy and naughty boy.

“Prophylaxis!” she exclaimed, scooping soapsuds upon it. “That’s the name of the game. Prophylaxis!”

The
spada
began to respond as she manipulated it with both hands. “The dear boy,” she crooned. “He’s such an angel.” She handed me a towel, and as I dried myself Miss Quinlan made a soap and water solution, poured it into a douche bag, hung the bag on a hook, sat on the toilet, and plunged the douche nozzle between her thighs.

She toweled herself off, seized my
spada
, and marched me into the bedroom. By now I was without passion but overwhelmed with curiosity. Where would it all end? Miss Quinlan was a fiend but she was fun too, her flabby old buttocks bouncing as she pulled back the bedspread, kneaded the pillows, and nodded approvingly at the bed of love. On swift bare feet she dashed into the kitchen and returned with a jar of honey I had seen her purchase at the market.

“Jasmine honey!” she exclaimed, unscrewing the lid from the jar. “Taste!” She flecked a bit of it on her index finger and held it out. I opened my mouth to partake of it, but it wasn’t for me at all, it was for my
spada
, a tiny dab with which to get acquainted, smack on the tip. With sudden and enormous energy the
spada
came forth, head aflame, and looked around, ready to fight. I felt a moment of shame. What a ghastly way to honor my poor father. But I was caught up in it, I had asked Miss Quinlan for it, and there was no reason to stop now, in spite of my father, my wife, and my two sons.

Seating herself on the edge of the bed. Miss Quinlan spread a thin layer of jasmine honey over my
spada
, from the scabbard to the tip. The golden gleam of it delighted her and with a murmur of desire she partook of the delicacy. The dear Miss Quinlan! She took everything—I felt it all going away and out of me, my sword, my glands, my heart, my lungs and my brains, a banquet for a rather elderly queen—and as the sorcery subsided she lay back on the bed, panting desperately, and I sat pooped in a chair. She had taken everything, and I had nothing to give in return.