“Ignatius? I thought he was a misogynist.”
“Well, he thought it best to steer clear of women, but that was because they couldn’t get enough of him. A little, skinny, limping guy and they practically followed him around on the street, slavering. Fine ladies, princesses, even, and of course he wanted to avoid scandal, which would have torpedoed the Society. It did, of course, eventually, but that was much later.” (Marlene knew the story, naturally, from schooclass="underline" the Sacred Heart has something of a grudge against the founder of the Jesuits because, by his fiat, the Society of Jesus is the only religious order that does not have a sister house of nuns, and Sacred Heart nuns are ordinarily just those whom nature has designed to be Jesuits. Marlene occasionally thought that this unfair exclusion, much alluded to by the mesdames, had something to do with her own choices in life.)
“What Kevin needs,” said Father Dugan, steering the conversation again, “is a nice but not too nice girl, experienced but unthreatening.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” said Marlene. “Would you like the rest of the pastry? My eyes were bigger than my stomach. Besides, I have to go pick up my pizzas.”
“Bless you, no, thank you,” said the priest, smiling again and patting his belly, which as far as Marlene could see was perfectly flat. “It’s an indulgence I can’t afford.”
“Oh, come on! I won’t tell-seal of the confessional.”
The priest laughed. “Ah, Loyola, how wise you were to protect us from the temptations of charming penitents! No, really, dear, quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi.”
“Um, anything you thus press on me, I discredit and revolt at?” Marlene translated.
“Yes, Horace. Very good.” He beamed at her, his eyes full of affection and pain, mixed well. She thought that he must be nearly as lonely as Tranh, or Harry. He stood up and dropped some coins on the table.
“Now, I have to go too,” he said. “I have to fix the trap in the rectory sink. Oh, you would know where can I find some plumber’s dope and a cheap used pipe wrench?”
“You plumb?”
“We Jesuits are advised to be all things to all men. To Father Raymond and Mrs. Finn, our housekeeper, I am a plumber.”
“In that case, you can get the dope at Canal Hardware off Lafayette,” said Marlene. “I just happen to have an eighteen-inch pipe wrench in my car. You can borrow it.” They walked out of the restaurant to Marlene’s VW, where she handed over the tool.
“Ah, thank you. You were plumbing today too?”
“No,” said Marlene, “I was just using it to beat up a guy.”
Father Dugan inclined his head inquiringly.
“Sunday, Father,” said Marlene. “In the box.”
“What happened to Posie?” asked Karp as he helped Marlene clear away the remains of the family’s informal dinner.
“Some piece of shit pounded on her. Again. The worst part is, she went looking for it. Christ, Butch, she lives with me. She knows what I do. It’s like … shit, I don’t even know what it’s like.”
“A nun on the stroll?” suggested Karp.
“Thank you. You know, I may have to hand in my feminist card, but I’m starting to think that some women want to get pounded, just like some guys like to have women pee on them.”
“It’s the natural result of the contradictions caused by our corrupt patriarchal society,” said Karp primly. Marlene snorted. “God, and if you believed that, wouldn’t you be the perfect man!”
FIFTEEN
Christmas fell on a Wednesday that year, and Judge Peoples decided to forgo trying to fit in any trial sessions in between the big day and the second of January. Karp thus had a week off to spend with his family, or rather with his children and their nursemaid, since his wife was heavily engaged with the violent discontents of other families. Karp did not mind this as much as he thought he would. He was, for one thing, a low-maintenance husband: neat, lacking noisy or time-consuming hobbies, not fussy about meals, of moderate libido. After the extraordinary tension of the Rohbling trial he was more than content to sink into slovenliness, rolling around with his two boys in piggy filth, unshaven, eating junk, watching holiday shows and soaps on TV, going to Macy’s to see Santa (the boys shrieking in horror, Lucy blasé) and to shop for presents.
Lucy virtually took over the operation of the household, her natural bossiness now at last having full scope. She had been around kitchens, helping, since the age of five, and had no problem with simple meals of the heat ’em up plus salad variety, which was vital because Karp could not boil water, and Posie was not much better. Lucy incorporated this duty into her perpetual rivalry, and considered she had done well by it; they had mere cuteness, she had lasagna and minestrone. Daddy went shopping with her alone, and took her and her pals to Rockefeller Center to skate, and to downtown movies in a cab.
During this period Marlene would often be out half the night, or all of it, and come staggering in at dawn. They did not talk about what she was doing. He didn’t want to know.
The actual holiday, naturally, remained literally sacred to Marlene, and she consigned her besieged ladies to the hands of God and Harry Bello, going out to her parents’ house in Queens on Christmas Eve and eating the traditional dinner of twelve fish dishes (her aunt Celia explaining to Karp, as she did each Christmas without fail, that these represented the twelve apostles), attending midnight mass with the whole family (including Lucy, a glorious first for the child) at her girlhood church, St. Joseph’s, driving home sleepily to Manhattan and returning Christmas day to exchange gifts and eat heroically.
Karp enjoyed this event. He had minimum social responsibilities and no horse in any Ciampi race. He was, in fact, often appealed to as a neutral party, a being so alien that he might be expected to bring a uniquely fresh judgment to the field of Italian-American family squabbles. These were marvelously colorful, brief and violent as summer squalls, full of operatic gestures and imprecations. Karp much preferred them to the quarrels of his own family, which were covered over by a poisonous geniality and lasted for decades.
Besides that, the Ciampis treated him as a guest, since it was clear that he could never be a paisan. John, the oldest, the orthodontist, a basketball fan, talked to him about teams and players, and checked the smiles of all the kids, of which there were fourteen; Patricia, the city planner, discussed politics with him, assuming that Karp, as a Jew, was more liberal than he actually was; Anna, the big sister, cooked and kept her five kids in line, and interacted with Karp only on the subject of food and children; Paul, the handsome one, the youngest boy and a chef, flirted unconvincingly with all the wives, and was not allowed in the kitchen; Dom, the middle boy, was supposed to have gone into his father’s plumbing business but had gone instead to Vietnam, from whence he had returned minus a foot and something else, for which reason when he became as he always did, terribly drunk and abusive and violent, his brothers and brothers-in-law took him out in the backyard and restrained him, talking him down in shifts until he was fit for company again or stumped off yelling down the street. Karp, for some reason, although by far the largest person in the room, was excused from this duty by unspoken agreement, another aspect, he supposed, of his special outlander status. The true family attitude toward him was, he imagined, summed up by ancient Nona, Marlene’s grandmother, tiny and nearly blind, who once remarked to him, “My granddaughter, Marlene, the crazy one, married a (whispering) Giudeu, may God forgive her, but they say he doesn’t look like one of them, and besides, the pazza, she could have brought home a black niuru, God forbid!” (crossing herself)