Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

“Mussolini is very good.”

“Then why does Miss Goodbody say bad things about him, too?”

“Because she’s a Jew.”

“Grandpa... was Jesus a Jew?”

“No.”

“Miss Goodbody says he was a Jew.”

“She’s lying.”

“He wasn’t?”

“He was Italian.”

That afternoon, I tried everything I knew on my grandfather. First I agreed with him that the only good people in the world were Italians, hoping this would soften him up enough to take me to Italy. I reminded him that in Fiormonte you could eat off the streets, whereas in Harlem you lived in peril of your very life, witness the brutal beating I had suffered at the hands of six hundred Ethiopian savages on Park Avenue that time, remember? My grandfather said that October was not a good time to be going to Fiormonte, and when I asked him why not October, he said, “April is better.” So I asked him to call Goomah Katie in Newark, New Jersey, and tell her he was bringing me there to stay with her, and explain to her that I was no trouble at all even though I was blind, I was just a quiet little kid who played nice piano, and I would be a definite asset to her household, and my grandfather said, “Goomah Katie doesn’t have a piano.”

I then suggested that he could perhaps talk to my mother and convince her either to get Vesuvio back from the ASPCA or else buy me another dog, and I even offered a sort of bribe by promising I’d go to the opera with him sometime if only he would talk to my mother. My grandfather said, “I don’t like to interfere in your mother’s house.” So I said it might be a good idea if he told my mother she was no longer welcome in his house if she didn’t get my dog back or get me another dog, and he said, “She’s always welcome in my house, Ignazio, the same as you.” I told him I was a poor little blind kid who needed something furry and loyal to love me, and he said, “You’re not poor and you’re not little, and your mother loves you more than Vesuvio ever could.” So then I hinted that my piano lessons might suffer if I didn’t have man’s best friend around to stroke and pet while I ran over the pieces in my head, and he said, “Professor Passaro doesn’t have a dog,” and finally I said, “Gee, Grandpa, I thought you loved me,” which was my last desperate stab at getting that damn dog back, or getting another dog, or getting out of the city, and my grandfather said, “I do love you, Ignazio. But a dog is a dog, and a family is a family.” I’m surprised he didn’t add, “And a good cigar is a smoke,” because he lit up one of his guinea stinkers at that point, perhaps to signal that the debate was over, and then he said, “Stay home, have a cup of hot chocolate, okay?”

So I decided to stay.

I used to hide a lot. Under the dining room table, or under the bed, or in the closet — I think it made me feel less blind. I’m not sure why that was true. I think an enclosed space, a tight small space, was somehow less threatening to me. I was hiding under my Uncle Luke’s bed on Christmas Day. In the kitchen, the women were doing the dishes, except for my Aunt Victoria, who was playing cards with the men in the dining room. I could hear their voices and the sound of Pino tuning his mandolin, and in the kitchen the rattle of dishes and the metallic clatter of utensils. I lay flat on my back under Luke’s bed, and listened.

“Does anybody want more coffee?” my grandmother asked.

“No, thank you, Mom,” Matty said.

“You deal,” my father said.

“Somebody’s light,” Dominick said.

“Me,” Luke said.

“Aunt Victoria? You in?”

“I’m in.”

Aunt Victoria was a chord I would not learn till years later, a D-flat dominant, augmented nine, augmented eleven — shrill, disssonant, sharp, and irritating. She was my grandmother’s other sister, a spinster, as hard and ungiving as Bianca was soft and generous. I didn’t like her. Nobody liked her. My mother said Aunt Victoria was the way she was because she was constipated. When Tony heard this, he suggested that we buy her a tin of Ex-Lax for Christmas. Tony and I both hated Ex-Lax. As a weekly routine in our house we were given one laxative or another each Saturday night before we went to bed. Ex-Lax or milk of magnesia or citrate of magnesia. They were all terrible. But being an American meant being regular.

“What do you say, Aunt Victoria? Can you open or not?”

“I pass.”

“I’ll open for a penny,” Luke said.

“Without me.”

“Cristie, are you bringing in that pastry?”

“Hold your horses.”

“Raise it a penny.”

“Out.”

“I’ll see you.”

“Cards.”

Pino began playing an Italian song. His son Tommy, who was twenty-one years old and reportedly as handsome as his mother had been beautiful, immediately began singing along with his father, and then my grandfather joined in, and the three of them together sang at the tops of their voices while the poker game continued around them. In the kitchen, the women talked above the noise of the game and the doubtful harmony of the singers. For Christmas, my brother Tony had given me a pair of woolen gloves to keep my hands warm when I went up to Passaro’s with him each Saturday, and my Uncle Luke had given me a black leather fleece-lined aviator’s helmet with goggles on it, and my grandfather had made me a brand-new mackinaw, and my parents had bought me electric trains with an engine that whistled, and I was thinking maybe I should get out from under the bed and go play with the trains my father had set up for me in the front room of Grandpa’s house, when all of a sudden I heard the sound of cards being slapped onto the tabletop, and my Uncle Luke yelled, “Son of a bitch !”

My grandfather and Pino stopped singing. Tommy’s voice hung in the silence for just an instant longer.

“Hey!” my grandfather said.

“She stays in the game when she hasn’t got anything, and ruins my draw!” Luke said.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you?”

“I hate to play with goddamn women in the game.”

“I put in my money, didn’t I?” Aunt Victoria said, and then very calmy added, “I deal, I believe. If you don’t like playing with women, just drop out, sonny boy.”

“That’s right, I don’t .”

“ That’s obvious.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Take it how you want it.”

“What’d she mean by that crack?”

“Play cards, play cards,” my grandfather said.

“No, what’d she mean?”

“I meant that someone who’s thirty-two years of age should at least be engaged by now.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Luke!” my grandmother called from the kitchen. “That’s your aunt you’re talking to.”

“What do I care who she is? Tell her to mind her own business.”

“Hey, come on, Luke...”

“You keep out of this, Doc!”

“Ah, now we’re getting to it!” Aunt Victoria said. “Do you hear how he talks to his own brother?”

“He’s my brother, I can talk to him any way I...”

“Certainly. You think I don’t know why ?”

“Are we playing cards here, or what?” my father asked.

“It’s because you’re jealous of him,” Aunt Victoria said. “ He’s the one who went to college, he’s the one who’s engaged already....”

“Come on, who’s dealing?” Matty said.

“You’re not fooling me, sonny boy,” Aunt Victoria said. “You think I don’t know what’s eating you? You think I was born yesterday?”

“Why the hell don’t you go home?” Luke said.

“Tessie, are you listening to this?” Aunt Victoria said.