Swimming in the Moon: A Novel (36 page)

I tried.

“Teresa is healed enough to walk,” said Hilda. “And it would do her good. Take her to Lake Erie. She can if you walk slowly and rest when she tires. You both need some air.”

Late in the afternoon we made our way to the lake and walked east along the shore to a log pile near the water, where we sat. An abandoned warehouse fronted the lake, every window gone. “Look, it’s like Palazzo Donn’Anna in Naples,” I said dreamily. Mamma shrugged, as if she didn’t remember the palazzo whose tale she’d told a hundred times. Had all the old stories had been cut away from her too? She looked around anxiously.

“Toscanini’s not here,” I said. “We’re alone.” She closed her eyes, shutting herself away. I was alone too, imagining fishermen at the palazzo. Did they know why servants roused them from that silky bed? Might they have heard the whispered stories, and did they perhaps walk almost willingly to the window in the early light? Were they pushed, or did they jump into the sea and rocks below? Why not? What end could a poor fisherman expect but water? What other pleasures in his miserable life could equal those he’d known that night? Why struggle on?

But the fishermen made their choices long ago. What of
us,
the germ plasma? All that Mamma and I had attempted in America had failed: college, vaudeville, and perhaps the strike as well. I hadn’t saved Irena. What had my care of Mamma brought but a gash across her belly? Enrico had been happy enough before I set out to reform him. The thread I’d supplied to Giovanna had cost her job at Printz-Biederman and sent her into a terrible fire.

Father Stephen’s consolations sank below dark waters as years of loneliness rolled before me. Lula was wrong; this was no “time” of being alone. This was my gateway to a life of endless solitude. The easy coupling that Yolanda and Giovanna enjoyed was impossible for me, shackled to a hopeless lunatic. Henryk had played my husband out of kindness, but he was right: any decent man can be kind for an afternoon. And what of Mamma? Dr. Ricci hadn’t promised a cure even before her last assault. If a young fisherman felt doomed to draw up empty nets forever, why
not
walk to a tall window, mount the ledge, and leap, joining the mermaids forever?

Months of troubled sleep had dulled my mind, swirled my thoughts, and shaken my faith. Over the dark western rim of the lake, purple rimmed a towering cloud. I watched its summit slowly build to a cone. Was Vesuvius calling us home? Perhaps this was
our
high window,
our
leap to the end of despair, like burning girls at the Triangle factory. It would be so easy. Just walk to Vesuvius. Why not?

The strike would succeed or fail without me. Nothing could touch Enrico now. Henryk would find himself a faithful Jewish girl. Giovanna was settled and healing. Dr. Ricci would write an outraged report linking the doctors’ careless arrogance to Mamma’s death. Some might recall her vaudeville life or my little time in college. One woman would weep for us in Ashtabula, two in Youngstown, another in Naples, and my friends in Cleveland, but Roseanne would clean our room and rent it out again.

Three men had climbed onto an abandoned pier, sharing a bottle. Even if they noticed two figures walking resolutely into the lake, what could they do, so far away? The soft rim of Vesuvius blazed. It would fade soon and we must hurry.

I shook my mother’s shoulder. “It’s time to go.” I believe she understood me. Why else would she have sat up? I took off my shoes and stockings and then hers. The habits of poverty are so strong: protect your shoes, they cost so much. We stood, and she took my hand like a trusting child. For an instant that trust made me falter. By what right did I make this choice for her
?
Yet what truly lay ahead for us besides more mistakes and failures? “It’s better this way, isn’t it, Mamma?” She turned to me. Golden light across her face made her beautiful again. She seemed to nod. I told myself that she nodded.

In water to our knees, I pointed to the cloud. “See, Mamma, it’s Vesuvius. We’re going there. Nobody will cut you again. Just a little more and we’re home.” Walking carefully through sucking mud, we were thigh-deep when a distant freighter sent chill waves splashing at our waists.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, thank you for that chill. Mamma’s arms wrapped around her wounded belly, a simple act that shook my resolve. She still had enough aliveness to seek warmth. If we went farther and the heedless water stung her scar, what then? I slipped in mud. My feet found solid ground to hold us both, and we stood there a long time. Was I waiting for our bodies to absorb the chill, for my resolve to strengthen or for it to fall away? All I remember is an empty space of waiting.

As waves gently lapped us, a song floated over the water. From where? Oh, yes, those men on the pier, waving their bottle and rocking side to side, singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” That silly song. What difference did it or any song make now? And why, of all the possible tunes, should this one be our last? But Mamma turned her head to the music, solemn and attentive as a bird, pulsing with the clocklike beat. “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd,” she whispered, the words coming slowly, yet each a little louder.

I sang softly with her: “Buy me some pea-nuts and Crac-ker Jack.” Our arms wrapped around each other in the rocking waves. “I don’t care if I ne-ver get back.” In the deepening dusk, a stray beam lit her eyes, tiny brimming lakes. She grimaced, and I nearly laughed, knowing what pained her: my terrible voice. Still I went on singing, and she too: “Let me root, root, root for the home team. If they don’t win it’s a shame.”

The Vesuvius cone was flattening, its purple rim fading to charcoal. My resolve was fading. “Are you cold, Mamma? Shall we go home?” She nodded. We turned around and carefully picked our way to shore. An evening breeze was coming, and a second freighter sent new waves against us. We hurried, skimming over mud. On land again, we found our shoes and stockings, put them on, and walked quickly home, wet skirts slapping against our thighs.

“What happened to you?” Roseanne demanded at the door.

“Nothing. We went wading in Lake Erie.”

“Wading in your clothes? Wet and walking in the wind! You’re crazy! You want to get pneumonia and die?” I hugged her, and she stepped back, stunned. “Are you drunk, Lucia D’Angelo?”

“No. I just love when you talk about wind. Never mind, we’re going to take our baths now. I know it’s not our day.” She stared after us, shaking her head.

I brought Mamma upstairs and drew her hot water. Exactly as before, she took my ministrations silently, neither helping nor protesting. That night in bed, she turned as always to the fading wallpaper. Yet she was
here
, and I beside her. I whispered thanks into the blessed night for the waves, the freighter, and the drunkards’ song.

We woke to astonishing chill. Walking to the union hall, I passed men, women, and children in the street smiling and greeting neighbors. “It’s cool!” they said in wonder. “And look at the sky!” It was clear blue, fresh against leaves shaken clean of the summer’s dust. That afternoon, blankets fluttered on clotheslines, shedding the camphor of summer storage.

C
ORSETS IN
K
ALAMAZOO

When two people
from the same Old Country village meet by chance in America, a special bond unites them, close as no other. In the days after I led Mamma into Lake Erie and back, she often turned on me a piercing, knowing glance. We had been to a dark and secret place together where most had never gone. She grew less skittish around me. I was more patient with her—and more watchful of myself.

“You must be stronger, Lucia,” Dr. Ricci warned. He was right. Often now, I imagined sinking through dark waters as floating leaves blocked the sky. I sometimes heard beguiling whispers:
You could try again, you know. The water’s always there.
Sometimes by evening I barely remembered how I’d spent my day.

I often awoke, sweating, with Enrico’s bloody face floating over mine. I learned to slip outside until the chill darkness brought back his other, eager, happy faces. Or I’d go to the dining room and work problems in mathematics until I’d worked myself back to peace. I had convinced Pepe to go back to school and reminded him of the many professions in Cleveland in which immigrant children had prospered. “You want too much for me,” he grumbled, but promised to work hard and do his friend Enrico proud.

I bought good yarn and cajoled Mamma into knitting a shawl for Roseanne. She settled herself at our window overlooking a tapestry of leaves slowly turning red, orange, and amber. She’d never had the leisure to truly enjoy this American marvel, I realized with a guilty jolt. In other autumns she’d worked through the daylight hours or shuttled between stage, dressing room, and hotel. When could she watch trees?

She no longer cooked, for a morbid fear of knives had joined her other neuroses, but the dusting and polishing were even more relentlessly thorough. “Look!” Roseanne commanded prospective tenants. “You can’t find a speck of dust in my house, not a speck.”

With Mamma knitting and cleaning, I went back to the union meetings. The first night I watched children playing at the edge of the great hall, imagining Enrico with them, organizing a game. Who was the lunatic now? No, no, this was merely grief. Didn’t people often glimpse the dear departed in familiar places?
Listen to speeches. Don’t watch children.

Isadore was reporting that garment makers had taken out loans to cover their losses and pay the strikebreakers. “You see? They’re in trouble.”

“So are we,” returned voices from the floor. “We’re four months without salaries, Isadore. We’re hungry and winter’s coming” Still, a slim majority voted to keep striking. After long debate, we determined a new tactic: wearing white and marching silently. Why bother shouting our demands? They were certainly known by now. Who could object to a peaceful witness for justice? In fact, when a man with his cap pulled low lunged at a line of women, bystanders yanked him back, chiding: “Give ’em a break, buster. They ain’t bothering you.”

Even the hecklers drifted away. Were they weary of their game or no longer bribed to keep up a gauntlet of abuse? Perhaps we’d shamed them. An anonymous donor, I assumed the Livingstons, gave a hundred dollars for striking families. The money passed quickly through our soup kitchen. “It’s only beans and a little bread,” the cooks complained. But at least we had food for another week.

I’d finished my cameo money, and Roseanne again recited her many favors. A few days after newspapers praised our white marches, Mrs. Kinney sent me thirty dollars. “I know these are difficult times,” she wrote. “We’re so sorry about the boy at the icehouse.” When I showed the letter to Pepe, he whistled. “People knew Enrico all the way in Ashtabula!”

The silent pickets soothed me. Here was comfort and company. Linking arms with others who had their own sorrows, I found my mind straying less often to dark places. I slept better at night and woke stronger in the morning. “Suppose we’d started the white marches earlier?” I asked Josephine.

“Hmm.” She scribbled this thought in her brown notebook. Lately she had been having me write letters to thank supporters or seek more funds. “I’m sure it’s fine,” she’d say, signing her name before reading. She watched me figure strike pay, order supplies for the soup kitchen, and encourage weary strikers. “You’d really go back to bookkeeping?” she asked one evening.

“What else can I do?”

“You could help organize a strike in Michigan.”

A thrill rose and fell in me. “You know I can’t leave Mamma.”

“That’s a pity.”

October 14, Josephine and I were arrested for obstructing a public sidewalk. Even the policeman handcuffing us acknowledged the “obstruction” was trivial: I was steadying Josephine as she bent to tie her shoelaces. “Captain’s rules, not mine, ladies.”

“Since when is tying your shoes a crime?” Josephine demanded.

“Obstruction is obstruction, ma’am.” The officer had us step aside as he whistled for a Black Maria.

Pepe ran up, tugging my skirt and whispering: “I’ll tell Roseanne so your mamma doesn’t worry. I’ll tell Isadore too.”

“Thank you, Pepe. But you better go now. Don’t obstruct the sidewalk.”

As he was darting off, the officer caught his shoulder. “Hey kid, weren’t you pals with that boy at the icehouse?”

Pepe twisted to glance at Josephine, who nodded. “Yes, sir. Enrico was my best friend.”

“And you are?”

“Pepe, sir.”

“Well, Pepe, I’m real sorry about what happened. Heat makes folks act crazy sometimes.” He fished two quarters from his pocket. “Here’s one for your ma and one for you.”

“Thanks a lot, Copper. Can I go now?”

Looking into bright, round eyes, the officer added another quarter and gave Pepe a gentle push. “Okay, scram before the captain sees you.”

The Black Maria came. My second journey in that dark, airless box was less fearful. I knew to sit quietly. What else could one do? As before, we were measured at the station, photographed, solemnly informed of our crime, and told we’d have dinner soon. “How lovely,” said Josephine. “Could that be beans and bread? Such an improvement over the union hall, right, Lucia?”

“Yes, so much better than bread and beans.”

“Very funny, you two,” said the officer. “Here’s your cell. You can sing, tell jokes, whatever you want. You’ve got it almost to yourselves.” Two disheveled women were curled together in a corner like puppies, lightly snoring. Soon after, a guard brought us dinner on tin plates and another two for “the sleeping beauties.”

“Isadore will bail us out after the meeting,” said Josephine when the guard left us. “He’s calling for a vote tonight. I’d like to be there, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to lose the vote. The strike will be over tomorrow.”

I stared. “How do you know? We had a majority a few days ago.”

“We
barely
had one and it’s gone now. We can’t keep asking people to sacrifice. Tonight they’ll vote not to. I’m sure of it.”