Tommy left her once when she was young and vulnerable and then returned to her, unable to resist the woman she had become. He will return to her again; she has to believe that. Her news frightened him, but he has a noble heart and he loves her, he has said so over and over; he will do what’s right, and when he sees his son — she has already decided it will be a boy — he will be proud and will love her even more deeply than before. Perhaps she was premature in telling him, but she was afraid he was about to leave her, and she didn’t dare to wait. If she is wrong (she is not, she knows, a woman’s body tells her such things), she will say it was a miscarriage, and she will cry over the terrible loss and he will pity her and hold her close and beg for her forgiveness. And she will grant it. Pressing her hand against her belly, she can just feel the little heartbeat.
The first sinner to visit his confessional this morning, the Reverend Father Battista Baglione knows, kneeling before a crucifix for his morning prayers, will be, as always, the widow Signora Abruzzi. It is she who, seemingly sleepless, brings him at dawn and dusk each day the news of the neighborhood in the form of her confessed sins of ira, invidia, and calumnia. An incurable and cruel gossip. Not always reliable, but always interesting. What his mama used to call una tremenda pettegola. Last night it was mostly about the Vincenzo Bonali family, what is left of it, and their current catastrophes, including violence, lost employment, and mortgage foreclosure caused apparently by the end of the shameful affair between the daughter and the banker’s son — the sordid details of which are all too familiar to him. A child utterly lost to the sins of the flesh but whose heart still belongs to the Church. The widow hinted at a pregnancy out of wedlock and recounted previous salacious episodes in the girl’s life. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, the widow said as usual in her prayer of contrition. But she is not. The priest adds a prayer for himself—“O Mary, Queen of the clergy, pray for us…”—then rises and enters the confessional to await the orange-haired widow’s newest dispatches. This morning, however, she is not the first; another widow has usurped the honor. A good woman who has served her church, family, and community well, and who has found a new convert for the Holy Mother Church. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she says, then whispers that she has been stealing from her employers. “You must return what you have taken and repent of your sin,” he says sharply. “But they have so much, Father, and we have so little.” “God places such temptations before us, my daughter, to test our strength and our faith. You must do as I say. And you must pray for forgiveness.” He assigns her a stiff penance. Father Baglione’s parish is not blessed with great wealth. He does not want to lose such a valued convert.
It is in the early morning that Vince Bonali most misses his wife Etta. Even when times were hard — during the long winter mine strike, for example — she always had a hot breakfast ready for him by the time he reached the kitchen. Sometimes little more than her German potato pancakes and homemade applesauce, made from bruised apples she bought cheap, but always delicious and satisfying. He has long since realized that she often did without so he would not go hungry. The thought always makes him tearful and does so now. This house they shared… This morning all he could find was a stale piece of bread which he toasted and buttered with cooking lard, topping it with sugar and the last sprinkle from the dusty cinnamon shaker. Etta would have been proud of his resourcefulness. But he is still hungry. He has taken his morning walk around the block, sum total of his daily exercise. He has opened his last beer and sunk back into his old porch rocker, where he now passes his days, wishing them away. Earlier last week, while things were still going well, his son Charlie bought him a quality fresh cigar, now half smoked, and he tucks it into his jowls, pats his pockets for matches. None. Have to light it at the stove. Later. He remembers when they bought this house. Such optimism then. Good job, union officer, steady pay, low mortgage. Figured on paying it off in ten or twelve years. Handy with tools, he put a lot of time and energy into the place. Rundown now. Never finished that paint job he started five years ago; it all looks the same again. The little picket fence he made lies broken and trampled. The cement Virgin, a Christmas present from Angela, leans in the mud as if losing her footing. Inside, nothing works as it should. No matter. No longer his anyway. He has refinanced it many times over just in order to scrape by and owes more now than the original mortgage. Angie’s job at the bank has protected him. That’s over. He has been notified. Papers are being served. He’s being locked out of his own house.
On his way out to the car, Ralph Tindle hears banging on the studio door. “Ralph? Ralph? Is that you?” he hears his dear helpmeet call out. He knocks on the door: “Hello? Hello?” “Ralph! He’s escaped! He locked me in! Let me out!” He knocks again. “Hello?” “Ralph! What are you doing? Quickly! He may be in trouble!” He knocks again. “Anybody there?” “Ralph! Please! Don’t be annoying! It’s urgent! I have to find him!” He smiles, locks up the house, and, humming that old Salvation Army tune, “Let Him In,” the frantic banging on the studio door playing in the background, gets in his car and drives away.
“Eh, cugino, what’s this with our ragazzo? He called. He feels you are not protecting him.”
“Charlie don’t need protection, he needs discipline. You unloaded a lotta trouble on us. He’s your fucking ragazzo, not mine. You should keep him in line.”
“Ma che minchia…? He’s apprehending a criminal, has to use a little force…”
“The kid he hit is the lifeguard at the city pool. He was just closing up.”
“That’s your story, hunh? Don’t sound very helpful, Dee. There was a broad…”
“A young high school kid. She was the one who—”
“Sua puttana…”
“No, he’s been seeing someone else.”
“Charlie’s sister, right? And he dishonored her. She’s got a bun in the oven and he’s dumping her for this new piece of ass. Hey, it’s a family thing, Demetrio, what can you do?”
“Charlie was in uniform, armed, driving the squad car, used excessive force — even if there had been a crime, and there wasn’t. He’s got a mountain of serious charges on his head right now.”
“So, what’s the kid’s price? We can take up a collection.”
“It won’t work. His father runs the bank here and everything else.”
“So, all right, we call up the kid’s old man, let him know how expensive this could be for him.”
“I wouldn’t. He’s a pal of the governor, congressmen, has a direct line to the FBI through some old college buddy. Get him into it, he might have some more questions to ask.”
“…”
“Charlie is suspended pending an investigation, but I have to fire him and bring criminal charges. If I don’t, I’ll be out of a job, facing charges of my own, and Charlie will get taken in anyway.”
“Well. You disappoint me, compagno. Ma che cazzo, maybe we could use someone on the inside…”
“As I understand it, Nick, they assume Bruno is dead, some sort of mad doctor atrocity or other, and are planning a symbolic burial out on the hill in the next couple of weeks. I figured we’d ask to have him released to us for a day and take him to his own funeral. Things are boiling up again out there, and maybe this will give them something to theologize about for a while.”