now that he had citizenship papers, never regarded himself as an Italian. No, he was an American; sometimes sentiment buzzed in his head and he liked to yell his pride of heritage; but for all sensible purposes he was an American, and when Maria spoke to him of what ‘the American women’ were doing and wearing, when she mentioned the activity of a neighbor, ‘that American woman down the street,’ it infuriated him. For he was highly sensitive to the distinction of class and race, to the suffering it entailed, and he was bitterly against it.
He was a bricklayer, and to him there was not a more sacred calling upon the face of the earth. You could be a king; you could be a conqueror, but no matter what you were you had to have a house; and if you had any sense at all it would be a brickhouse; and, of course, built by a union man, on the union scale. That was important.
But Maria, lost in the fairyland of a woman’s magazine, gazing with sighs at electric irons and vacuum cleaners and automatic washing machines and electric ranges, had but to close the pages of that land of fantasy and look about her: the hard chairs, the worn carpets, the cold rooms. She had but to turn her hand and examine the palm, calloused from a washboard, to realize that she was not, after all, an American woman. Nothing about her, neither her complexion, nor her hands, nor her feet; neither the food she ate nor the teeth that chewed it – nothing about her, nothing, gave her kinship with ‘the American women.’
She had no need in her heart for either book or magazine. She had her own way of escape, her own passage into contentment: her rosary. That string of white beads, the tiny links worn in a dozen places and held together by strands of white thread which in turn broke regularly, was, bead for bead, her quiet flight out of the world. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. And Maria began to climb. Bead for bead, life and living fell away. Hail Mary, Hail Mary. Dream without sleep encompassed her. Passion without flesh lulled her. Love without death crooned the melody of belief. She was away: she was free; she was no longer Maria, American or Italian, poor or rich, with or without electric washing machines and vacuum cleaners; here was the land of all-possessing. Hail Mary, Hail Mary, over and over, a thousand and a hundred thousand times, prayer upon prayer, the sleep of the body, the escape of the mind, the death of memory, the slipping away of pain, the deep silent reverie of belief. Hail Mary and Hail Mary. It was for this that she lived.
Tonight the beaded passage into escape, the sense of joy the rosary brought her, was in her mind long before she turned out the kitchen light and walked into the living room, where her grunting, groggy sons were sprawled over the floor. The meal had been too much for Federico. Already he was heavily asleep. He lay with his face turned aside, his mouth wide open. August, flat on his stomach, stared blankly into Federico’s mouth and reflected that, after he was ordained a priest, he would certainly get a rich parish and have chicken dinner every night.
Maria sank into the rocking chair by the window. The familiar crack of her knees caused Arturo to flinch in annoyance. She drew the beads from the pocket of her apron. Her dark eyes closed and the tired lips moved, a whispering audible and intense.
Arturo rolled over and studied his mother’s face. His mind worked fast. Should he interrupt her and ask her for a dime for the movies, or should he save time and trouble by going into the bedroom and stealing it? There was no danger of being caught. Once his mother began her rosary she never opened her eyes. Federico was asleep, and as for August, he was too dumb and holy to know what was going on in the world anyway. He stood up and stretched himself.
‘Ho hum. Guess I’ll get me a book.’
In the chilling darkness of his mother’s bedroom he lifted the mattress at the foot of the bed. His fingers pawed the meager coins in the ragged purse, pennies and nickels, but so far no dimes. Then they closed around the familiar thin smallness of a ten-cent piece. He returned the purse to its place within the coil spring and listened for suspicious sounds. Then with a flourish of noisy footsteps and loud whistling he walked into his own room and seized the first book his hand touched on the dresser.
He returned to the living room and dropped on the floor beside August and Federico. Disgust pulled at his face when he saw the book. It was the life of St Teresa of the Little Flower of Jesus. He read the first line of the first page. ‘I will spend my heaven doing good on Earth.’ He closed the book and pushed it toward August.
‘Fooey,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel like reading. Guess I’ll go out and see if any of the kids are on the hill coasting.’
Maria’s eyes remained closed, but she turned her lips faintly to denote that she had heard and approved of his plan. Then her head shook slowly from side to side. That was her way of telling him not to stay out late.
‘I won’t,’ he said.
Warm and eager under his tight sweaters, he sometimes ran, sometimes walked down Walnut Street, past the railroad tracks to Twelfth, where he cut through the filling station property on the corner, crossed the bridge, ran at a dead sprint through the park because the dark shadows of cottonwood scared him, and in less than ten minutes he was panting under the marquee of the Isis Theater. As always in front of small town theatres, a crowd of boys his own age loafed about, penniless, meekly waiting the benevolence of the head usher who might, or might not, depending upon his mood, let them in free after the second show of the night was well under way. Often he too had stood out there, but tonight he had a dime, and with a good-natured smile for the hangers-on, he bought a ticket and swaggered inside.
He spurned the military usher who wagged a finger at him, and found his own way through the blackness. First he selected a seat in the very last row. Five minutes later he moved down two rows. A moment later he moved again. Little by little, two and three rows at a time, he edged his way toward the bright screen, until at last he was in the very first row and could go no farther. There he sat, his throat tight, his Adam’s apple protruding as he squinted almost straight into the ceiling as Gloria Borden and Robert Powell performed in Love On The River.
At once he was under the spell of that celluloid drug. He was positive that his own face bore a striking resemblance to that of Robert Powell, and he was equally sure that the face of Gloria Borden bore an amazing resemblance to his wonderful Rosa: thus he found himself perfectly at home, laughing uproariously at Robert Powell’s witty comments, and shuddering with voluptuous delight whenever Gloria Borden looked passionate. Gradually Robert Powell lost his identity and became Arturo Bandini, and gradually Gloria Borden metamorphosed into Rosa Pinelli. After the big airplane crackup, with Rosa lying on the operating table, and none other than Arturo Bandini performing a precarious operation to save her life, the boy in the front seat broke into a sweat. Poor Rosa! The tears streamed down his face and he wiped his drooling nose with an impatient pull of his sweater sleeve across his face.
But he knew, he had a feeling all along, that young Doctor Arturo Bandini would achieve a medical miracle, and sure enough, it happened! Before he knew it, the handsome doctor was kissing Rosa; it was springtime and the world was beautiful. Suddenly, without a word of warning, the picture was over, and Arturo Bandini, sniffling and crying, sat in the front row of the Isis Theater, horribly embarrassed and utterly disgusted with his chicken-hearted sentiment. Everybody in the Isis was staring at him. He was sure of it, since he bore so striking a resemblance to Robert Powell.
The effects of the drugged enchantment left him slowly. Now that the lights were on and reality returned, he looked about. No one sat within ten rows of him. He looked over his shoulder at the mass of pasty, bloodless faces in the center and rear of the theater. He felt a streak of electricity in his stomach. He caught his breath in ecstatic fright. Out of that small sea of drabness, one countenance sparkled diamond-like, the eyes ablaze with beauty. It was the face of Rosa! And only a moment ago he had saved her on the operating table! But it was all such a miserable lie. He was here, the sole occupant of ten rows of seats. Lowering himself until the top of his head almost disappeared, he felt like a thief, a criminal, as he stole one more glance at that dazzling face. Rosa Pinelli! She sat between her mother and father, two extremely fat, double-chinned Italians, far toward the rear of the theater. She could not see him; he was sure she was too far away to recognize him, yet his own eyes leaped the distance between them