“Wave out your sweater, Laura Ciardi, or I’ll tell Mr. G. It’s just the kind of stupid thing you’d do. Prove you don’t have my brother’s record album. Show me.”
What could she do but live and suffer. Laura clopped her science book and her other books and binder on the floor. Opposite her, across the stairwell, the tall double-sashed window was partly open. It had been stuck that way since the summer. The gap up top was about a foot or so. Laura said, “Take good care of my baby,” and then, “I don’t have your stupid LP, see?” and with a flick of her wrist she sent the square record sleeve skirling toward the open part of the window. Maxine could find it in the alley with the cigarette butts and greasy pizza-slice papers. But a downdraft or some other perversity interfered, and the LP became a guided missile. Its thin edge smashed hard against the bridge of Maxine Sugargarten’s nose. It took good care of her baby squirmy face. There was a trip to Miss Adenoid’s office, and the emergency room, and Maxine’s precious nose had had to be cauterized. And on Tuesday morning Laura came back to school in her Sunday coat from Macy’s and she sat outside Mr. Grackowicz’s office while Nonna and Nonno went inside to bargain for her.
The slatted bench was hard. The school secretary was adding up packets of lunch money and coming to different sums each time, and swearing softly under her minted breath. Laura tried to eavesdrop between the counting and the swearing.
“She not a girl, she nearly addled,” Nonno was saying. His accent betrayed his anxiety; Laura knew he was trying to call her adult, not addled. “This only play, only fun time, this no assault. We send Sugargartens fat brick Parmigiano and small smoked ham and nice bottle best imported Barolo.”
“Also some crystal ginger slices, Mr. Headmaster,” added Nonna. “Mountains and molehills, do not mistake them, Mr. Headmaster. Everything is not the Alps. Some things are pimples, not Alps.” She was trotting out her Ladies’ Auxiliary elocution voice big-time.
Mr. G. had replied in a low tone. Laura couldn’t pick out a word.
“She sorry, she write sorry letter, that she can do,” said Nonno. “We make her. We help her. She no write but she think sorry. We write, she sign, love, love.”
“If they only charged the same for chocolate milk as for white,” said the secretary to Laura, “this wouldn’t be my weekly migraine.”
“I’m not so good at counting, can’t help,” replied Laura in a whisper, wanting the woman to shut up.
“Of course who forget childhood, it shake everyone, childhood, Mr. Headmaster. Your childhood shake you up, you turn into Mr. Headmaster. All good.” But the accent was getting stronger. Nonno was losing confidence in his argument. “But she no child no more, she addled. Her father—”
Mr. Grackowicz cleared his throat; he didn’t want to hear the family history.
Nonno wouldn’t be deterred. “Our only child, Mr. G. In World War Number Two, he fight on our side, Mr. G., on our American side. We already here, we Ciardis, we no Fascist. We come here 1929, just in time for Great Depression, we in line at soup table. First we eat, and when we can, we cook and we serve. We make our way. We Yankee doodles. We fight for American freedom. Laura’s papa, he our son. Our son Giuseppe, he fight for freedom in South Pacific Ocean. After war, when he get demobbed, he go join U.S. occupation in Austria. He die there, service to his country. Giuseppe Ciardi, buried in American military grave. You can’t throw Giuseppe daughter out of your brave free U.S.A. school, not when our Giuseppe he sacrifice his life. Honor our son, Mr. G. Honor. His soldier friends they call him Joe. American hero Joe Ciardi, riposa in pace.”
Mr. Grackowicz really didn’t want to hear the full history of the Ciardi family, but once Nonno got started, look out.
“And the mother, Laura’s mama, her with only one boy, then he go down in crash, Mr. G.! This Marco, this Laura only brother! Laura only one left! Who can blame Laura mama for sickness in head, in heart? I ask you. We know what mama feel, we feel same. Two deaths in ten years, what family is to bear? I ask you! We do what we can to make Laura her leftover child addled. We take her in, we love her Laura, we raise her. We need Laura here. She big, big help in store. I send you box of best Campania blood oranges by special bicycle delivery boy before you leave school today, Mr. G.”
Then Mr. G. talked for a long, long time. He was probably reading from reports by other teachers, who had “concerns” about “fitness” and “deportment.” Maybe “fistfights.” When the door finally opened and Mr. G. said, “Miss Ciardi, come in here please,” Laura could hardly move.
She came to the doorway and wouldn’t sit down. “I’m sorry, I said I was sorry,” said Laura. “I didn’t mean to hit Maxine Sugargarten in the schnozzle.”
“That was only the tip of the iceberg, Laura,” said Mr. G., shaking his head.
“That’s some iceberg,” replied Laura, which no one thought was funny. She didn’t tell about the locker room ambush earlier that day. It was too awful to say aloud.
“I’ll put everything in writing,” said Mr. G. “That is how we do it.”
“Giuseppe Ciardi, only son, sacrifice for our chosen nation,” said Signore Ovid Ciardi, but with failing conviction. “And it come to this.”
So it came to this, with Laura sitting in Mary Bernice’s chair of a Sunday morning, teetering between a wreck of a high school career and becoming an exile to someplace so far away it might as well be another country. Well, it was, wasn’t it? Canada wasn’t in New York. The air would be clean and clear and she might die of oxygen poisoning without the rich diesel winds of Manhattan.
She pressed against her sides as if she were showing a doctor where it hurt. But nothing hurt. It just—it just felt.
Everything hurt, actually, except her skin and her bones and muscles. Everything inside her was dry as old spiderweb. She was too young to feel old.
So she was almost relieved now to hear Nonna home from her devotions. The key in the lock, the creak of the old door. “Madre di Dio, what are we going to do?” called Nonna. Perhaps she forgot that Mary Bernice was off for the day.
“I’m coming, Nonna,” called Laura, dumping the cat on the braided rug laid on top of the linoleum floor. “Mary Bernice is out today.”
“The whole house is collapsing,” said Nonna. “Everything is collapsing.” It did look a wreck. More of the hall ceiling had fallen down while Laura had been stalking the snowy streets. “Mop this up, would you, Laura, you’ll find a bucket in Rosa Mendoza’s cupboard. If I didn’t believe the Christ Child had come to bring us peace and joy, I’d say there was a Christmas plague upon this house.”
When Nonno got home, he picked up the phone. “They come back at seven a.m. domani,” he then reported. “They find leak, they fix. Tomorrow only wind, no snow. They start on ceiling repair. They say not worry, Bella. They have time and they have smart hands. They good boys. Mrs. Steenhauser give them good notices. They do her back porch steps last summer, spic and span. They finish us up here tomorrow.”
“I want a small Negroni before Laura brings out the antipasti and the rice salad,” replied Bella Ciardi. “What is the thing the American ladies tell me say? Yes, I remember. ‘I can’t cope.’ How that, Nonno? ‘I can’t cope, get me my Negroni.’ I am so up-to-the-minute, no, caro?”