Death 5 Rape （Marriage） #22
“Bullshit,” Stella said. This event had been planned; Assunta had baked a cake. Stella’d bet anything Carmelo had come over to propose to her. She’d bet anything Tony had already approved the suit—maybe even suggested it.
Tina tapped at the door again, as if any of her deep knowledge of her sister’s personality led her to believe Stella was going to come out of the bathroom. “Stella. Come out and say hello, Carmelo’s here.”
Tina continued to tap and call for a few minutes before giving up and going away.
Stella forced her breathing to even out, feeling the flush fade from her face.
For a period she felt sick to her stomach, and she rubbed her cornetto and tried to drive away the bad feeling, until she realized it was not a haunting or a déjà vu at all, it was just a memory—the Christmas party four years ago when Carmelo had made her hide in the bathroom at the Italian Society, and she’d thought she was getting sick but it was just her monthly bleeding.
To be thorough she checked, but it wasn’t her time today; it was only the memory that had been about to overwhelm her. She splashed water on her face.
Time ticked by as she waited for Carmelo to leave.
Stella rode out waves of muted fear every time she heard footsteps near the bathroom.
She was waiting for the moment Tony would come and knock down the door, give her one or two for being fresh and drag her, disheveled, to the living room. But Tony never came.
Every fifteen minutes or so Tina would come by and tap on the door, ask her to come out. She didn’t reply to her sister. Once there was violent banging, the manly kind, and Rocco’s voice: “Stella, get out of the bathroom. I need to piss.”
“Go piss out the window,” she snapped, then regretted saying anything at all. She heard Rocco curse her but leave.
There was little to do in the bathroom besides lose herself in her anxieties.
She found a bottle of red varnish in the medicine cabinet, and painting her nails kept her occupied for a while.
She hummed to herself to force some equanimity, painting carefully.
Usually Tina did Stella’s right hand. She tried not to imagine the repercussions of this afternoon.
How badly would Tony beat her tonight after Carmelo left?
Was this going to be the rest of her life, hiding in a bathroom?
Carmelo seemed determined to prove he was as stubborn as Stella.
Two hours must have passed, but she still heard his aggressively cheerful voice booming from the living room.
Didn’t he realize that if she were forced to come out at this point, she would be completely humiliated?
Did he plan on not leaving her any dignity at all?
The last time Tina knocked, she had changed up her cajole. “Stella, come out. I have to do a number two. It’s serious.”
Stella didn’t answer. She was engaged in a full sulk now, and ashamed of herself, but she saw no other way out. The sun outside the window was dimming and her head was filling up with a twilight ache.
Two minutes later, Tina came by again. “Stella! Please come out. I have to go.” She rapped, hard. Bang bang bang. “Stella! Please, please, Stella, please. It’s an emergency. Please come out. Or just let me in! You don’t even have to come out.”
Tina wasn’t a very good actor. She was probably really suffering. Well. Served her right. She had chosen to be loyal to Carmelo, take his side over her own sister’s. With genuine malice, Stella hoped Tina shat herself.
“Please, Stella.” Tina’s voice was breaking. “I’ll do anything. I’ll give you my gold necklace. Please, Stella.” She rapped again. “All of my jewelry. I’ll do all your chores for you. Please, Stella.”
Stella looked down at her shiny drying nails. They weren’t perfect, but they were pretty good. You’re a cold woman, Stella, she heard Carmelo saying.
She sat silently until her sobbing sister went away.
FINALLY STELLA HEARD CARMELO make his good-byes and leave.
For good measure, she waited another fifteen minutes; she would hate to come out and find out they’d all been playing a trick on her and he was still there.
Feeling prim, she exited the bathroom, her red nails smoothing the sweat-wrinkled skirt of her pink Palm Sunday dress.
Rocco, sitting on the couch, sneered at her.
She hoped he had taken her advice and pissed out the window.
Next to him sat Tina, whose back was slumped, eyes downcast. Stella didn’t have to decide whether she wanted to ask Tina about what had happened, because her mother came into the living room to announce, “Dinnertime. I just have to strain the pasta. Get the table ready, Tina.” Assunta shot Stella a malevolent look.
“You, too, stupida brutta. Help your sister for one time in your life.” She snorted and performed her version of a flounce back to the kitchen, wide hips lurching over her swollen legs.
Tina and Stella were silent during dinner.
Stella was afraid to draw attention to herself, lest her frighteningly neutral father be inspired to take a position on her behavior this afternoon.
Tina, meanwhile, stared darkly at her plate.
Stella had begun to feel remorse about how vengefully she’d treated her sister, even if Tina had betrayed Stella.
Stella wondered what had happened to Tina’s number two.
When dinner was over, Rocco went to the Caramanico bedroom to change into his robe. The women could hear his shout all the way from the kitchen. “Tina! What’s the matter in here? It smells like shit!”
Stella caught Tina’s arm. “What did you do?” she whispered.
Tina shoved the pile of dirty dishes onto the counter and wiped her forehead, which had broken into prodigious sweat, on the sleeve of her good dress.
“Oh, Madonna, Stella. When you wouldn’t come out of the bathroom, I had to go cacchi so bad .
. . my stomach was upset, I don’t know what it was.
Oh, it was so bad, there was nothing I could do!
So I . . .” Stella handed her a dishrag, which Tina used to wipe her mouth—even her mouth was sweating.
“So I went in the bedroom and took one of the bowls from the wedding china, you know, from the box under the bed. I went in the bowl, and—”
Stella almost choked on her scandalized laughter. “Tina! You made cacchi in your wedding china?” But even as she spoke she considered what else her sister could possibly have done. Gone outside in the yard?
“Tina!” Rocco was bellowing.
“A big bowl,” Tina said urgently. “You know, the kind for fancy soups. There was nothing to wipe with, so I used my nightgown, the silk one from my honeymoon. But then there was nowhere to put it, so I put the cacchi bowl and the nightgown under the bed, and now the whole room stinks.” Tina was crying sloppily.
“What do I do? If Rocco finds out what I did . . .”
“Tina!” Rocco shouted.
“Rooo-ccoo!” Assunta shouted back, so loudly Tina was startled out of her tears. “Rocco! I need you!” She turned to give Stella a theatrically accusatory glare, then called, “There’s something stuck behind the stove, Rocco! I need you to move it for me!”
“In a minute,” Rocco called back.
“No, right now!” Assunta was pushing the oven from the wall.
“Hurry or it will fall on me!” It was like a vaudeville production, Assunta trundling herself down to her knees.
But here Rocco came hurrying into the kitchen, after all, so maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous.
“Go, stupida,” Assunta hissed, smacking Tina on the calf.
Stella and Tina ducked past Rocco, scurrying down the hallway and into the second bedroom. It stank like a butcher’s slop pile in July.
“Ugh, Tina,” Stella said, but they didn’t have time to waste. She could hear the oven squeal as Rocco moved it with unfortunate ease. “I don’t see why you thought it was going to fall on you,” he was saying to Assunta. They only had seconds to solve this.
Tina bent down behind the bed and rose slowly, carefully, the china tureen sloshing brimful between her hands with a soupy yellow-brown liquid in which Stella could plainly, regrettably, make out the lupini Tina had been snacking on at lunch.
Stella heard Rocco coming back down the hall and in a flash of synchronicity she threw the window open just as Tina lunged toward it—for a moment they were perfectly connected again, like they had been as children, as if they shared the same set of eyes and hands and impulses—and Tina tossed the whole lot of it, nightgown, shit, tureen and all, through the open window, which Stella brought crashing back down onto the sash just as the china smashed against the driveway.
Rocco opened the door and looked from one flush-faced sister to the other. They smiled at him pleasantly.
“What are you doing in here?” he said to Stella after a moment of confusion.
“Just leaving,” Stella said. “Tina was lending me her red nail polish.” She wished she’d been able to think of something else to say, but what were the odds that Rocco would notice her nails were already painted?
“Huhn,” Rocco grunted. Stella filed past him, followed by Tina, who went to wash herself off before her husband noticed the streak of brown across her bosom.
IT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, Tony’s sitting out the whole charade peacefully.
Tina and Rocco had gone to bed; Stella was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother when Tony joined them. He seemed cheerful and youthful; Carmelo’s demeanor had proved its contagiousness. He poured himself a glass of wine and topped off his wife’s and daughter’s.
“Salut,” he said, and Stella murmured “Salut” soberly as he clinked her glass. Assunta did the same, but she was peering up at her husband through her bushy eyebrows in a way that put Stella on alert. Her mother knew what was coming.