Read Online The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante - Free Book Online Page A

mooning over his great mother, enrapturing her with loving glances, even pausing midst his greed to lift her hand and kiss it gratefully. She laughed to see how completely she had woven her spell, and while they stared like haunted lovers I slipped into the parlor and telephoned Harriet in Redondo Beach.
    “Is everything all right up there?” she asked.
    “Fine, fine. No problems.”
    “What about the divorce?”
    “Forgotten.”
    “Did you see my mother?”
    “No.”
    “Will you?”
    “Maybe tomorrow.”
    “Promise?”
    “No.”
    I felt my mother’s warm breath on my neck and turned to face her, eavesdropping behind me. Not surreptitiously, but brazenly listening.
    “Let me talk,” she said, drawing the phone from my hand. Then, into it: “Halloo, Harrietta. She’sa me talkin’, you modder-in-law. How you are, Harrietta. Thassa good. Me? I’ma feela fine.”
    There it was again, my mother’s hypocritical fawning before Harriet, that groveling like a serf before the baroness, so self-debasing that even her powers of speech fell apart. Born in Chicago, knowing only the English language, my mother nonetheless spoke like a Neapolitan immigrant fresh off the boat whenever she and Harriet came together.
    I listened, exasperated, tearing my hair. “Harrietta, I’ma gonna aska yo wan beeg favor, si? You tink she’sa all right iffen your husba stay two, three day, maybe wan week? He’sa help his papa, poor ole man, he’sa got the rheumatiz. I tink wan week, maybe ten day, maybe two, tree week, and the job, she’sa finish. Okay, Miss Harrietta? Tank you so much. Godda bless…”
    I ripped the phone from her. “Home tomorrow, Harriet. Forget all that garbage!”
    Mama shoved her mouth into the instrument.
    “Please, Harrietta, I hope I donna make trouble in you house, okay? I’m joost try to help his papa. He’sa gotta sore back.”
    “Home tomorrow!” I yelled, clapping down the receiver.
    A clatter of heavy shoes on the front porch, the clumsy movement of bodies. Joe Zarlingo and Lou Cavallaro lurched through the front door carrying my father between them. With calm professionalism, like a nurse, my mother cleared the sofa and fluffed a pillow as the men stretched my father out. He lay there besotted, a smile on his dribbling lips.
    “He’s smashed,” I said, looking down at him.
    “I’ll get the coffee,” Mama said.
    Zarlingo and Cavallaro glared at me.
    “What brought this on?” I asked.
    Zarlingo was shocked. “You got the guts to ask?”
    It sickened Cavallaro. “Jesus, man. You ain’t even human.”
    Virgil came from the kitchen, wiping his mouth with a napkin and studying the old man without emotion. Then he moved to the front door, tossed the napkin into a chair, and smiled at me.
    “What did I tell you?”
    He went through the front door. I stepped out on the front porch and watched him drive away. Another car, a Datsun camper, was parked out there. It was Zarlingo’s.
    He came from the house with Lou Cavallaro and the two stood silently on either side of me. Zarlingo bit off the tip of a Toscanelli and jabbed it between his teeth.
    “You going up to Donner Pass with your father?” he demanded.
    “Nope.”
    “You mean, you want your old man to go up there, haul rock, mix mortar, and build a stone house all by himself?”
    “If that’s what he wants, I certainly won’t stand in his way.”
    “In other words, you don’t give a fuck if your father lives or dies.”
    “I didn’t say that, you did.”
    “He’s a proud man,” Cavallaro said. “Don’t you understand that by now?”
    “Pride goeth before the fall.”
    Suddenly old Zarlingo hauled off and hit me a loud whack across the cheek with his open palm. It was a stinging smack, surprising, shocking. He seemed more surprised than I at what he had done, and Cavallaro stood there bewildered. I laughed. There was nothing else I could do. I laughed to hide my anger and walked away, down the path to the sidewalk, where I