“I didn’t even tell you I got made assistant manager at Wanamaker’s because I thought it would make you feel bad. My mother said to bury my promotion like a milk bone, because it would scare you off. Well, she was wrong about that. Something else scared you off.”
“It’s not your career at Wanamaker’s, Peachy. It’s about happiness. Personal fulfillment. See, if you loved me, you’d want me to do the things that bring me joy, and in turn, I would want to share those things with you, and those things would make you happy too.”
Peachy got up off the ground, dusted off her wool work skirt, and stood in front of her fiancé. “Nicholas Castone. You live in your aunt’s basement, and you drive a cab. I am your joy. Me. I love you, and my intent was to make you a home and give you children and, God help me, keep my figure in the process. I was going to quit my job when we got married, after we saved a cushion, not because I hate my job but because I wanted to take the burden off of you. What more can one woman do for one man? You tell me.”
“She could support his dreams.”
“Ugh. What dreams?”
“Borelli’s.”
“That bunch of nut bags? We’re back to them again?”
“They’re my respite.”
“They’re outcasts of society. The men are fruity and the women are loose.”
“They’re my friends.”
“God, Nicky.”
“I understand them, and they understand me.”
“What’s to understand? You’re a very simple person.”
“They don’t think so.”
“Oh, now they’re a pack of intellectuals. Great thinkers in wigs . . . and . . . and leotards!”
“It’s not like that.”
“I went to college! New York State Business College. You didn’t even go to college—where do you get these crazy ideas?”
Nicky was losing patience. “You can keep the ring.”
“Do you think I was in this for the ring? I’d need more than a ring for a seven-year commitment, I’d require a diamond mine and Mr. De Beers himself bringing me breakfast in bed for the rest of my life in exchange for the time I’ve put in. I don’t care about the ring. I wanted the life. You were it for me, the only one.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. Who would want me now? I’m a relic. I’m like some ancient talisman the nuns found in an old monastery and hung in the sacristy to pray to on Holy Days of Obligation. I might as well be made of rusted tin and hanging on the wall by a thumbtack with a piece of my sleeve in a glass box as proof I lived.”
“You’re still young and as lovely as you ever were.”
“One hundred and fifteen pounds. Not since the Crusades has a female DePino been this thin. I can still fit into my fourth-grade Catholic school uniform. And you don’t want me.”
“It’s not about want. You’re a very desirable woman.”
Peachy began to pace, as if the answer to her dilemma could be found on the ground, like the paper footsteps of the Learn the Lindy sequence in the Arthur Murray dance kit. She clapped her hands together. “It’s because I didn’t do the thing.”
“You did enough.”
“No, I held back. Donna Bonnani told me to do the deed, and I thought to hold out for the wedding night—give you the fireworks display after the nuptial mass. Something special. But Donna was right. She told me to submit.”
“I didn’t want you to submit.” Using the word submit made Nicky feel sick.
“Oh, don’t tell me, you’re fruity like the theater people?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think—that’s something you know, Nicky. People know what they are. They know what they like.”
Peachy was desperate. She climbed onto Nicky’s lap and coiled herself around him like a garden hose. She placed her hands on his chest, traced the vein in his neck with her tongue, found his mouth, and kissed him, engaging her lips, tongue, and jaw like she was breaking down a tough piece of saltwater taffy.
The situation with Peachy’s tongue became so moist that when Nicky closed his eyes, he thought he was in a car wash. “Peachy. Stop. Come on. The religious statues.”
“Now you feel shame?” She wiped her mouth on her hand and removed the slash of coral lipstick from Nicky’s mouth. “Am I repulsive?”
“No.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s not right.”
“You have enlightenment after I compromised my moral code for you?”
“You cannot guilt me into staying.”
“I will guilt you into staying for the rest of your life. Think about what you’re doing. We have to look at our years, accumulated like a Christmas Club at the First National Bank. I’ve got interest earned in this thing, and so do you. You can’t throw that away. Besides, you made me happy. Don’t I make you happy?”
“Peachy, no person can make another person happy. The person has to make him-or herself happy.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Could be.”
“That’s what I’ll tell my parents. I’ll tell them you lost your mind—an undetected mass clogged your cerebellum, or you stood too close to a tank in Germany and you’re having flashbacks, or you’re a selfish bastard who got tired of me and dropped me for some mysterious reason.”
“I will always regret my timing.”
“Seriously? That’s what you regret? Your timing?”
“I should have told you sooner.”
“Who is she?”
“There’s no one else.”
“It will come out. Just tell me.”
“It’s not about another woman, it’s about a man. Me. I was content, and it’s not enough.”
“Do you know how many poor slobs in this world hope for contentment? It’s the goal—not the enemy!”
“I want to take a risk with my life—I want to do something that scares me.”
“A German putting a machine gun in your face didn’t scare you?”
“Not that kind of fear. The kind that you get when you take a chance.”
“On what?”
“On me. On my life.”
“Nicky, you sound like somebody who drinks.”
“I understand why you would feel that way. It isn’t rational.”
“You can’t wake up someday and snap your fingers and have a good wife and a nice family. You’ll be like creepy Mr. Freggo who lives in the bus station. You’ll be old and all alone, picking fleas out of your shorts.”
“I don’t think I want what you want.”
“Who doesn’t want a home and a family? It’s un-American. It’s inhuman. It’s lonely!”
“It might be, and it probably is, but I can live with that.”
“My mother warned me that an orphan has no ties. Who throws away the future like this?”
“Somebody whose future has already been written. Somebody who could predict everything that would happen between this moment and a spot on his lung at age seventy-eight.”
“Did you go see a witch?”
“I’m just guessing, Peachy. I’m not living, I’m just in line. I do what I’m told. I’ve always done what I’m told. I joined the army, put on a uniform, and followed my cousins. When I got back, I put on another uniform, and I followed them from the house on Montrose right across the street into the garage. I’m a hack because they’re hacks. I’ve done what is expected of me because it made everyone around me happy. I thought that’s what happiness was—making sure everyone else is happy. Now all my cousins are married—”
“Which is normal!” Peachy shrieked.