The End by Salvatore Scibona Read Free Book Online

as it happened, were strictly plain Jane. She had been living in this very house for at least ten years by the time Rocco himself was born. She was ninety-three years old.
    She came from Lazio; however, her enunciation of the Italian language was barren of regional influence and pitiless, as though each word were a butterfly she was shooting out of the air with a pistol. One could hear that she had learned her English from the German people who had lived here years ago. Today it was the Sicilians, such as Rocco himself, who prevailed. Then it would be somebody else. God is great.
    On one occasion, in his store, while searching her change purse for pennies, Mrs. Marini had asked him, “Why don’t you close up for Easter or Flag Day or whatever the occasion?” He was used to questions like these, but not from her, and he blurted something he regretted. “What in the world would I do all day?” he said. She responded, counting off each word on her fingers, “Entertain, read, garden, pray, converse.”
    He knocked at the door. A boy showed him in. The boy was more than a foot taller than he was, and while they spoke, Rocco found himself looking up into the dark cavities of the boy’s long and listing nose. The lips were fat, contorted, the eyes far too big, the ears too pointed; the gaze—which never fails to reveal too much—was suspicious, ashamed, exalted, pious, self-consumed, attractive, and mean. The boy was a picture of becoming that had gone awry. Rocco had met his like at the yards, where he had been paid to chase the vainglorious transients from the boxcars.
    I know your fate, but I won’t tell it to you, he thought, shaking the boy’s hand, although he knew nothing of his past.
    There were too many kids around here. He could never place which mother and father with which kid, or which name with which kid, regardless of how many times they were introduced, but this boy was no relation of Mrs. Marini’s, as she had no relations in this country. Her one child, said the legend, had died in infancy. Recently the woman Testaquadra had started to tell him the whole tangle of events that had led to a boy of sixteen living with the old lady, but Rocco held up a hand and said solemnly, “I am disconcerned with this information.”
    The dining room lacked fancy woodwork and porcelain figurines, but the walls were hung with silk paper that showed a pattern of white and yellow flowers, and the exposed floorboards were waxed, the furniture was upholstered tightly. There was only one decorative item on the wall: It was a china dish painted with the face of Bess Truman, and it was upside down. Plainly she was a witch, as were all women of a certain age. The boy took his derby and asked after his health and led Rocco to a chair, which he pulled out for him. When, during the uncommon visits of his boys during their adolescent years, had he witnessed the slightest evidence that Loveypants had instilled in them any basic training in class, such as pulling out the chair for a guest? Not once, never.
    Mrs. Marini appeared in the kitchen doorway. “How do?” she said, and, paying no mind to his response, served the first course.
    Once she was seated, it was evident that her spine was straighter than his own. Her hair was not genuine but her teeth appeared to be. She asked perfunctorily after his comfort before the boy said the blessing and they fell to.
    The table would have sat fifteen but their places were set compan ionably together at one corner. All the windows were open, and an orchestra played on the radio from the parlor. He perceived that the boy was on orders to keep up his share of the conversation, which was informal and was concerned at first with the gardening of wax beans. The boy took the dishes to the kitchen and returned with the meat course. While chewing and listening to Rocco, Mrs. Marini periodically extended her hand toward the boy and tapped the tablecloth twice with her fingertips, whereupon the boy put