Alone in the room, with the colorful posters of the digestive system and respiratory system on the wall, Connie unbuttoned her uniform the rest of the way. She kicked off the white rubber-soled shoes and rolled down her girdle. Then she climbed up on the examining table, spread her legs, and closed her eyes, her own hands running up the warm length of her body, lightly pinching her nipples, imagining that it was Dr. DiMarco touching her, imagining him reaching his hands between her legs like she was doing to herself now, imagining he was whispering to her, What would I do without you, Connie?
This was her shame. She was a sinner. Three days a week, in Dr. DiMarco’s office, she found herself doing this. In the bathroom. In an examining room. Once even in her car in the parking lot. Touching herself like this, so often, so desperately, was a sin. And wanting it to be Dr. DiMarco broke the tenth commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; nor his wife, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. Worse, she would break the seventh commandment readily: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
When she got home on the nights she worked, as she made pork chops with mashed potatoes and peas with pearl onions and Davy practiced writing his letters, his careful a’s over and over on the yellow papers with the wide blue dotted lines, and Vincent came up behind her whispering, Little V wants a date, Connie thought about those stolen moments, that tug, that yearning that took over her body. She thought about Dr. DiMarco and how life with him would be, how different everything would be.
DINNER BEGINS without Vincent. No one can find him.
Vincent arrives just as Mama G starts to serve the spaghetti with anchovies. He sits down without apologizing and fills his plate high with smelts and eel and octopus and fried shrimp and baccala, then holds it aloft for Mama G to add the spaghetti with anchovies.
“Now I see how you keep your girlish figure,” Pat says. His own belly is big enough to hang over his belt, and to quiver when he talks or takes a breath.
Vincent laughs and raises his jelly glass of wine. “Salute, my brother-in-law. To our girlish figures.”
Mama G has left some spaghetti plain for the kids, but Cammie refuses it.
“I’ll take it with the anchovies, Mama G,” she says proudly.
Mama G beams, pinching the girl’s cheeks. “Figlia mia,” she says, and kisses the top of Cammie’s ringleted head.
It seems they will never stop eating, Connie thinks, even though she touches almost nothing. The platters keep getting emptied and refilled. Vincent and Pat drink too much wine and grow sloppy and silly. The metallic taste of vomit fills Connie’s mouth. When they get home, she will have Dr. DiMarco do a pregnancy test. No, she decides as quickly as she thinks this. She will go to Dr. Caprio. Somehow, the thought of Dr. DiMarco knowing she is pregnant embarrasses her.
Connie glances up at the clock.
“Amahl and the Night Visitors,” she says, getting to her feet.
Standing so fast makes her dizzy and she clutches the edge of the table, the plastic her mother has placed over the polyester tablecloth decorated with fake-looking poinsettias beneath it crinkling.
Angie stares into a small gold hand mirror, applying fresh dark-magenta lipstick. “Amahl?” she repeats.
“The opera,” Connie says. “It’s going to be on television in a few minutes.”
“Yeah,” Pat says, “that’s just what I want to do. Watch a friggin’ opera.”
“I’ve got your opera right here swinging,” Rocky says.
Unexpectedly, tears fill Connie’s eyes. She wants to go home. Now. Back to her small white Cape in Connecticut and her dreams of Dr. DiMarco falling in love with her. She wants to take Davy away from these people, who do not even seem to notice how special he is. But when she looks at her husband, it is clear he is too drunk to drive in the dark all the way to Connecticut.
The opera is just beginning when Connie sits in her mother’s worn easy chair, the powder-blue upholstery fraying at the seams. She runs her hands over it, as if she can fix it.
Anna comes in too, but she is not interested in Amahl and the Night Visitors. She just needs to put her swollen feet up on the little footstool.
“He wants five kids,” she says, almost boastful. “I am going to be pregnant for the next ten years.”
The little boy, Amahl, is trying to convince his mother that there are three kings at their door. The mother keeps asking, “What shall I do with this boy? What shall I do?”
“Mother, Mother, Mother, come with me,” the boy sings in the sweetest voice Connie has ever heard. “I want to be sure you see what I see . . .”
The boy’s name is Chet Allen, and watching him Connie realizes that Davy could be on television just like Chet Allen. She thinks of him in his kindergarten play back in October, how he came onstage in a floppy chef’s hat and white apron, holding a tray of baked goods and singing, “Have you seen the muffin man?” He had sung louder and more clearly than any of the other children.
Connie leans forward.
“I was a shepherd,” Amahl is singing, his voice pure and high. “I had a warm goat who gave me warm, sweet milk . . .”
Others have come into the living room. The air is filling with the smells of perfume and cigars and sweat and wine. But Connie can only stare at Chet Allen.
“Cammie’s going to do a little performance,” Gloria says. “A little song and dance.”