Visible Signs

Chapter 3

Chapter 3“W

hoa, Ceci.” Connie corrals her five-year-old. “Let Anna in the door first.”

“You promised.” Ceci hurls herself at her sister. “The snow’s almost gone.”

Connie squints at Anna’s frayed suede jacket. “Sweetie. Stop wearing that to school. You look like a tatterdemalion.”

“Spell it, Mama,” Anna says, tossing her jacket on the banister.

“See if you can first.”

Anna opens the dictionary on the shelf near the Scrabble board. “Tatter, tatter, then d-e?”

“Right. Then—”

“Wait. Don’t tell me.” Anna runs her finger down the page. “A person wearing ragged or tattered clothing. Ragamuffin.”

“Can I have a muffin?” Ceci says. “I’m hungry.”

“You can have a snack with Anna before you go out,” Connie tells her. “Unless she has a lot of homework?”

“Not really.” Anna sets her backpack on the stairs.

“Again? Maybe you should have skipped third grade like Daddy wanted.”

The anxious look on Anna’s face tells Connie she was right to intercede when Vince was badgering her. “Standout and standup, Anna.” Anna dislikes the spotlight as much as Ceci adores it. Anna may resemble Vince, but she’s her mother’s daughter.

When Anna goes upstairs to change, Connie bundles Ceci into leggings and boots, zips up her parka. “One hour, okay? And mind Anna.”

Ceci nods and bolts out the back door, leaving Anna to catch up with her.

Connie shakes her head. Maybe she would want more children if they were all like Anna, but one more like Ceci and she’ll be worn to a nubbin. She can barely cope with two. How did her mother manage with six? No, not manage . . . excel. Rose not only cleaned and ironed, baked and sewed but also took them to the botanical gardens, the Bronx Zoo, Radio City Music Hall. She’s saved every drawing and lock of hair, their baby teeth, report cards. Now nearly seventy, her mother still drops by to lend a hand and seizes any opportunity to babysit her thirteen grandchildren.

When Vince isn’t home by nine-thirty, Connie indulges her hope that this is the turning point, that he’ll come home triumphant. He was wild about the script. She loved watching him rehearse, his gaze fixed in the middle distance, his features suddenly stilled by grief or clenched in fear, or loose and languid with lust. Last night, he hardly slept. He pampered her with a breakfast tray this morning, and then joined her under the covers.

“This guy’s going to be the next O’Neill,” he had said, rubbing the small of her back. Vince slid his hand over her belly. “Maybe we should name this one Eugene. What do you think, Con?”

“Better than Tennessee,” she laughed.

“No, seriously. If it’s a boy, we’ll name him after the next great American playwright.” He tapped the curled-up script on the nightstand.

“Whose name is ?”

“Oh, right. It’s Joseph,” he said, releasing her. “Forget it.”

“Would it be so awful to name the baby after your father?”

“I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

Connie sighs. Vince is his father’s son, hotheaded the two of them, unbending. To be fair, that same stubbornness is what keeps Vince going. His audition was scheduled at six. This wasn’t a cattle call—he was asked to read. Along with others, she knows, but still. Maybe they’re running late, or they’ve called him back, or maybe he’s with Arthur, negotiating his contract, or maybe—s**t. Something smells scorched.

She shuffles to the kitchen. Her ankles are swollen, and the baby’s been kicking field goal after field goal. Must be a boy, this pregnancy is nothing like the others. She turns off the burner under the minestrone, as thick with fresh vegetables as stew, pours all but the bottom inch into another pan, leaves the burnt part to soak in the sink. She’s hungry but takes a handful of Saltines to tide her over until Vince gets home. She fed the girls in-between loads of laundry and finally—Ceci wheedling for an extra kiss, Anna for one more story—tucked them in an hour ago.

If she had the energy, she’d climb the stairs, change out of these grungy jeans, Vincent’s chambray shirt. She lowers herself onto the sofa instead, puts her feet up on the coffee table next to the pile of mail she hasn’t had the energy to sort through, gathering the stack onto what’s left of her lap. Tosses the Day-Glo circulars for snow tires, storm windows, and discount liquor, sets aside the seed catalogs that came weeks ago for when she has the time to even think about resuscitating the garden. She’d hoped but hasn’t yet managed to plant even one of the gardens she’d designed when she was a botany major. The sultry model on the cover of Vogue Italia seems to sneer at Connie’s split ends, un-plucked eyebrows. Neither Connie nor her sisters subscribed to fashion magazines. She still finds them both intimidating and obscene in their devotion to preening, to purchasing, to excess. Although Vince needs them for work, now that Marty promoted him from tailor to designer, if that’s the word for someone who knocks-off haute couture in the garment district. She eclipses the Vogue with the Burpee catalog. The bump she’d presumed to be a free seed packet turns out to be a letter from Holy Name Retreat House, postmarked December 9th. From Rita.

Connie can’t help it. In her mind’s eye, Sister Margaret Jude will always be Rita Mooney, that too-tall little girl who’d eaten most meals at Connie’s house, her big eyes ricocheting around the crowded table, trying to keep up with the boasts, the teasing, the jokes. Rose used to shoo her out of the kitchen; Rita had been so eager to help that she’d pile too many dirty dishes on the drainboard or climb onto the counter to put away a glass.

There’s a separate note to Anna from “Aunt Sister,” as the girls refer to her, and a brochure, the monastery grounds in fall splendor, the small white chapel even brighter amid the scarlet oaks and yellow poplars. The retreat schedule is listed in the centerfold. Rita circled the one called Reflection and Renewal for the New Year and the date, January 6th, and wrote “Please? I miss you!” in the margin. Two nights, three days. Connie sighs. She would have loved to. But honestly. As if she were free to do as she pleases with a husband and small children.

She munches the crackers, unmindful of the crumbs settling on the slopes of her breasts, as she reads Rita’s letter about the needy: Tomás and his family, the elderly woman buying a tin of sardines, which she probably shared with her cat. Rita’s such a … force. Always has been. Connie had loved walking down the corridors of St. Agnes, basking in Rita’s fervent glow.

When they were in fifth grade, Connie’s sisters tried (unsuccessfully) to tame Rita’s thick and curly hair so it would grow down and not out like a clown’s. All through grade school, except as a stand-in for pick-up basketball games, Connie’s brothers treated Rita as another kid sister, which is to say they ignored her. Until high school when Rita Mooney’s tall frame suddenly developed full breasts and lush hips. When her wild hair and broad mouth made her look more worldly-wise than the rest of the girls at St. Agnes. Then Connie’s brothers, and their friends, would hang around the stoop until Connie’s father chased them away. But even as teenagers, when most girls traded sanctity for the opposite s*x, Rita remained inflamed with desire for sacrifice and good works. If she envied Rita anything, it was her passion, not her beauty.

At the sound of the key in the lock, Connie startles up from sleep. Vincent, his back to her, shoulders out of his cashmere coat, draping it carefully on a wooden hanger.

She hoists herself up off the couch. “You’re home late, that’s a good sign, right?” She ambles over to him. “Are you hungry, sweetie? I’ve waited dinner.”

“Vince?” She reaches for him but he wheels around at her touch.

“Lay off, Connie.” He scrutinizes the living room. “Christ, this house looks like shit.”

She surveys the usual clutter: a pile of folded laundry perched in the crook of the club chair, coloring books, stray crayons, the purple one’s tip lying at an acute angle to its shaft, a doll with no underpants, a couple of raisins half-buried in the shag. With a practiced and calm deliberation, she clears the dining room table of clutter, coupons, correspondence. Sets a place for him at the table.

“What happened?” Not really needing to ask.

“Richard was there, looking flabby. They eat out all the time now that Claire has an expense account.”

Escaping to the kitchen, she tears lettuce leaves into a colander, rinses them under the tap, the water muffling his monologue. Vincent follows her. “Connie. Do you want to hear this or not?”

She doesn’t answer. He snatches the lid off the pot, sniffing, and exhaling an approving sigh. She smells spearmint and scotch. He wobbles a bit when he bends to peer into the refrigerator. “I’ve worked with Jack Cates before. Twice. After my audition, he says ‘Great seeing you, Vince.’” He rolls up a slice of bologna, bites it in half. “‘Great seeing you, Vince.’ You know what that means.”

She hasn’t been listening, just making sure the pitch of his voice was in line with ‘annoyed,’ not ‘furious.’ She hears the pause; she missed her cue. When she looks up, Vince hands her the line.

“Kiss of death.” He slams the refrigerator door. “Sorry to bore you.” He stalks off into the dining room.

Jackass. She picks up the bread knife, slices a chunk for herself, chewing as she throws the lettuce into a wooden bowl, adding slivers of carrots, cherry tomatoes. As she carries the salad and a wedge of bread to the table, Vince ignores her, as if she were some anonymous waitress. Fine. Retreating to the kitchen, she turns up the flame under the minestrone. She’s gnawing on another mouthful of bread when she hears him bellowing like Stanley in Streetcar.

“I wanted this one, damn it! Not off-off-Broadway, not an out-of-town tour, not pushing overpriced crap! ”

She scoops two ladles of the fragrant soup into a delicate china bowl and hurries into the dining room. “Vince. You don’t know for cer—”

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

She can’t decide whether to stay or walk away. She tries to look serene although her insides are churning. Vince totes up the reasons why he should have gotten the part. “First, the guy’s supposed to be athletic,” he clenches his fist, thrusts out his raised thumb. “No way Richard’s right for a guy who’s supposed to work out. Second,” he points his index finger at her like a gun, “the guy’s supposed to be Portuguese. Two-thirds of the actors in that room were either fair-haired or light-eyed. Third . . . ”

Oh, quit whining. Wine. s**t. She forgot. She holds up her hand. “I’ll be right back.” She’s in the kitchen struggling with the corkscrew when she hears his chair scrape the parquet floor.

“Connie, it’s cold, goddamn it!”

She steps into the doorway, just as Vince lets fly. The bowl strikes her collarbone, the soup still warm enough to redden her skin. When it hits the floor, she hears the musical pings of china shattering. Broth darkens her shirt, bits of vegetables cling to shards of white porcelain, the rest puddles on the floor.

Something primitive in her wants to bite his flesh, tear his skin. She lunges for him but slips and lands hard on her hip. He straddles her ankles, his balled fists on his thighs, the cords in his neck like slender snakes beneath his skin. Holding her breath, she wraps her arms around herself and calls Baby, baby, baby. Her veins feel dilated waiting for a message back. Out there, Vince rants on and on, a litany of her shortcomings: “You always . . . you never . . . ”

She stays down on the floor, in the sticky wet, curled around her womb, hating him.