Across the Table Read online

  We didn’t sleep much that night. It was as if we had to fill ourselves up with each other, fill that emptiness that had gnawed at us all the time he’d been away. We didn’t fall asleep until early morning, the sheets twisted around us. I woke up first, disoriented by the strange bedroom. I eased myself out of the bed to wash. There was a bit of blood, but not as much as I’d thought there would be. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. The bride who’d anxiously bitten her lip and walked with nervous hope down the aisle was still there. We still had a lifetime of unknowns ahead of us. But one question had been answered for me during the night. I had the certainty—don’t ask me where it came from—that if things were okay in bed, a couple could weather whatever else life threw at them. We were going to do all right, Al and I.

  We couldn’t afford more than one night at the Parker House, so we spent our last night in Boston and the second night of our married life at Al’s parents’ apartment. My mother-in-law, Antonella, invited my parents over for dinner. We’d spent the day walking around the city, arm in arm, Al helping me over the snowbanks, as we talked about the life we hoped to have. God willing, the war would end before the United States got pulled into it, and we could have a life.

  When we got to my in-laws’, my cheeks were red from the cold and I heard a lot of ribbing from both the Vitales and the Dantes about being the blushing bride. Al just took me in his arms with a grin and planted a big one on my lips in front of everybody. Then everyone had to kiss me.

  Eventually we sat down to eat. Al’s mother is Calabrese, so her cooking is slightly different from Mama’s. She made tripe in a pizzaiola sauce and her own fettucine. Papa had brought a jug of Chianti filled from the cask in our basement, the wine made from my uncle Annio’s grapes that he grew in his garden in Everett. The toasts were endless, each family raising their glasses to our safe journey, long life and many babies. The meal was raucous, a celebration but with an undercurrent of melancholy as the evening wore on and our mothers, especially, worried about our departure the next day. Nobody wanted to say good-night. But at last, Antonella, Mama and I cleared the table and began washing up and putting the kitchen back in order. Around eleven, with another round of kisses—and, by now, tearful embraces—my family headed down the stairs. I went to the front windows, Al’s arm around my waist, and watched them walk down the block. Before they rounded the corner, Mama turned and looked back. I blew her a kiss, but I don’t think she saw me.

  We sailed early the next day, first to Miami and then on to Trinidad. Off in the distance we could see the escort ships protecting us. We weren’t allowed to photograph them, a reminder that even on this side of the Atlantic, the world was a dangerous place. I was seasick the whole twelve days of the trip, throwing up in the cramped stainless-steel toilet in our cabin. When we had a practice emergency evacuation drill, I crawled up to the deck with my life jacket on, but at that moment, I didn’t care whether I lived or died, I was so sick. The tugboat horns indicating that we were in the harbor were the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.

  Little by little, I made a home for us on Trinidad. The first thing to adjust to was the heat, since we were practically sitting on the equator. I pinned my long hair up on top of my head and made a few sundresses out of some cotton I found in a shop in Port of Spain. But before I sewed the dresses, I cleaned.

  The cottages assigned to the married couples were newly built, like the airfield Al and his platoon were carving out of the peninsula. But left empty for even a few months they became overrun with wildlife, large and small. Our cottage had two rooms, plus a small kitchen and a lavatory. The shower was outside. When I first saw our home, I hadn’t held down any food to speak of in more than a week and I was covered in a layer of dust from the open jeep ride to the base. The sweat was pouring down my neck, leaving a trail of narrow brown rivulets.

  Inside the cottage, cobwebs hung from every corner, the husks of giant beetles and unidentifiable insects trapped in the sticky silk. Something had made a nest under the kitchen sink. Geckos slithered along the edges of the floor. If there’d been a clean place to lie down, curl up and cry, I would’ve done so. But there wasn’t. So I put my bags down on the porch and immediately dug out a housedress and a bandanna to tie up my hair.

  “You got a broom, some rags and a bucket?” I said to Al.

  God bless him, he scrounged around while I changed and came back with the basic necessities. He told me he had to report to his commander and then left me for the afternoon.

  I put all my years of Mama’s training as a housekeeper to use that afternoon and for days afterward, sweeping and scrubbing that place until it was something I could be proud of. It was my first home, after all—but let me tell you, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever imagined.

  The blue of the sea, the purple of the bougainvillea, the red of the Chaconia trees—I’d never seen anything like them. The colors of the land, the smells of the sea and the flowers—everything was heightened by the heat and the moisture. The same was true of the food. The tastes were both strange to me and exaggerated.

  The base had a commissary where we could get tins of evaporated milk, peas, potted beef and Spam. But I longed for fresh, so soon after I arrived I walked down to the little village that was halfway up the hill between the base and the harbor. I’d seen chickens pecking around a yard the first day, and vegetables I didn’t recognize growing in a field. I knocked on some doors, talked to the old mama who had the chickens and walked away with a basket of greens, some eggs and a packet of spices—cardamom, cilantro, some dried chili peppers.

  They eat spicy in Trinidad. Al was used to Calabrian cooking and that was spicy, so I gave the local things a try. If I had to open another can of Spam and make it into something recognizable, I thought I’d shoot myself. Or we’d both starve.

  But fresh eggs I knew what to do with. I had some potatoes and onions and made a pan of frittata, with the greens on the side. Al came into the house and smelled the familiar aromas. He ate that night with gratitude and pleasure.

  By Thanksgiving, I’d had almost a year to poke around the markets of Port of Spain and find things that were close enough to what we’d known in Boston or learn how to cook what was totally unfamiliar. We weren’t going to have turkey, for instance, but I’d gotten a nice capon the day before, all plump and with lots of flesh on its breast even after I’d plucked the feathers. I used breadfruit instead of sweet potatoes. I found a sausage maker, and although the taste wasn’t like my uncle Sal’s fennel sausage back home, it was still pork and hot. I couldn’t make lasagne, like Mama always did for Thanksgiving, because I couldn’t find any cheese similar to ricotta. But I bought some cornmeal and made pastelles instead, an island dish we had one night in a local tavern and Al liked so much I got the owner’s wife to show me how she made it. I used the sausage and a bit of beef I was able to get my hands on, chopped up and browned with onions and garlic and carrots and then simmered in broth and the local spices Imelda, the old lady in the village, supplied me with. At the end of the simmering you toss in olives and raisins. With the cornmeal you make dough with water and shape it into balls that you flatten with your hand. You put a spoonful of the meat mixture in the middle and mold the cornmeal dough around it, then wrap each little pie in banana leaves coated with oil and annatto powder. You tie up the leaves like a package and then steam the packets. Oh, when you unwrap those leaves, those pastelles are just bubbling with red juices and that spicy flavor that wafts through every kitchen in Trinidad.

  There was a lot of homesickness on the base, and the only way I knew how to dispel those feelings was with food. I invited all the married couples in the compound and the single guys in Al’s platoon to Thanksgiving dinner. Each of the girls offered to bring something; several of them had gotten packages from home, so we had a real feast that afternoon. We set up two long tables out in the courtyard between the cottages and covered them with bedsheets. Everyone brought their own chairs and dishes, since nobody
had enough to set a table for eighteen.

  I think it was the first holiday any of us had spent away from our families. But you know, that day, sitting across the table from one another, we were a family.

  Despite the heat and the strangeness, I got used to tropical life. I found an office job working for the navy and rode my bike to the base every day, along roads lined with pale blue and yellow shacks with rusty corrugated tin roofs and curious children watching me as their mamas spread laundry out to dry in the sun.

  Children. Al and I both wanted a family. Who didn’t? But two years went by in Trinidad, two years of lovemaking in the humid night, breezes drifting over us carrying the fragrance of frangipani or the roar of the night rains. Two years of waking up every month to renewed disappointment. I’m not one to dwell on missed opportunity. When the milk spills, I mop it up and refill the pitcher. But as time wore on, as I washed blood out of the sheets for yet another month, I couldn’t help myself. I cried. I wondered what was wrong with me.

  I didn’t think it was the tropics. If anything, the heat seemed to make everything and everyone around me more fertile. Two of the girls who lived in our compound had already given birth and three more were pregnant.

  One day when I was in the village picking up my eggs and greens from Imelda, I had to wait for her because she had another customer. But instead of filling the young woman’s basket with provisions, she pressed a packet wrapped in brown paper into her hands.

  “Remember, make a tea, let it steep for five minutes and then drink the whole cup. Every morning.”

  I watched the young woman take the packet nervously with a shy smile. Imelda patted her belly.

  “You’ll be carrying something in there in no time.”

  I felt a sharp longing and a desperation to try anything—even Imelda’s potion. I didn’t tell Al. I didn’t think he’d understand. Besides, I didn’t want him to feel inadequate—that somehow, because we hadn’t been able to make a baby, I wasn’t satisfied with our life.

  So I bought the packet of herbs from Imelda in secret that day, along with okra and onions, and made myself a tea of hope.

  The next morning the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We’d known we were preparing for war, but the horror of the attack and the chilling reminder of our own vulnerability—on yet another navy base on a tropical island—brought urgency and renewed purpose to the work at Chaguaramas.

  For the next three months the construction crew made an intense push to finish. Al worked long hours, coming home at night and collapsing into exhausted slumber after supper. He had no energy for lovemaking, and I was so afraid I was barren it was all I could think of on those few nights when we managed to reach for each other in the bed. I can’t say our lovemaking wasn’t passionate. But it wasn’t the same as the early days when we couldn’t get enough of each other. Besides my own worries, which I kept to myself, we had others, as well. My brothers Carmine and Jimmy had both been drafted. And with the completion of the base we realized new orders for Al were coming soon. God only knew where he’d go.

  When the orders came, I should’ve been glad that I’d at least be going home. I hadn’t seen my family in two years and the timing meant I’d get to see my brothers before they shipped out. But leaving Chaguaramas also meant leaving Al. I wasn’t going with him on his next assignment, because he’d be on a ship heading across the Pacific and into war.

  I was so busy packing up I didn’t notice that I hadn’t gotten my period. I wasn’t very regular, anyway, so I didn’t give it a thought. The navy flew us out of Trinidad to Florida instead of transporting us by ship. It was my first time in a plane. Al made me sit by the window and—oh my God—what a sight as we lifted off and circled the island. There was Al’s work below us, the long, straight landing strip, crisscrossed by two other runways, and a complex of hangars and administrative buildings and barracks. A small city in just two years. I squeezed his hand and then threw up into a waxy bag.

  We had two weeks in Boston before Al shipped out. We got there in time for a combined party—welcome home for Al and me, farewell for Carmine and Jimmy. Our mothers cried; the boys got drunk; Cookie, with my two-year-old nephew Vincent and another baby on the way, sat at the table rocking her toddler and trying to hold back her tears.

  The next morning Carmine and Jimmy got inducted at the base in South Boston and were on their way to Fort Dix in New Jersey for basic training. Al and I had a chance to talk about where I’d live and what I’d do once he was gone. I told him it didn’t make sense for me to rent an apartment just for myself. I’d move back in with my parents and get a job. After two years of working for the navy, I knew I had what it took to make a living. I was going to be okay, I assured him, remembering the haunted look on Cookie’s face and vowing I wouldn’t be a burden to anyone while Al was away.

  We got back some of what we’d lost in those last months of exhaustion and worry on Trinidad. Spring was arriving in Boston and we made excuses to our families and took ourselves outside.

  We walked all the way to the Esplanade on the Charles River.

  “It’s going to be different now, Rose.”

  “It’s always been different for us, Al. And we’ve been apart before. I didn’t forget what you looked like then. Or felt like.” I grinned and put my hand on his chest, pushing him gently. I was trying so hard, you know, to let him go without worrying about me.

  He grabbed my hand. “I’ll never forget what you feel like, either.”

  I dressed in my best suit, put on stockings and high heels, gloves and a hat the day his ship sailed. I wanted Al’s last memory of me to be special. I hadn’t worn clothes like that since we’d left Boston two years before. The suit was a little snug, and I thought, That’s what married life does to you—rounds you out. I stayed on the dock with the other wives as the ship left port, taking some comfort in our numbers. But I got on the trolley and went home very much alone.

  I fought the loneliness by staying busy. I got a job right away at the Shawmut Bank, as a secretary to one of the vice presidents. When I took the typing and shorthand tests, I did the best of all the candidates. I’d learned a lot on Chaguaramas. You make opportunities where you find them. I put my hair up, knew how to address the higher-ups with respect and saw what I needed to do to make my boss look good. It wasn’t long before the bank promoted me to office manager. I even had a nameplate on my desk—Mrs. Dante. I was twenty-one years old and felt as if I knew something.

  In April I missed my period again and this time I didn’t ignore it. But I was afraid to hope. I tried to put it out of my mind, busied myself with work so that I could bear the moment when, as always before, I’d start to bleed. But May arrived and I finally allowed myself to believe I might be pregnant. I kept my suspicions to myself until I saw the doctor, as if confiding in someone else might make it disappear. Generally I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t go in for the mal’occhia that my mother’s generation brought from the old country. But I did break down in Trinidad and let myself fall under the spell that despair sometimes drives us to, and I wasn’t willing, just yet, to go back to being a totally rational person.

  I found a doctor at Boston Lying-In Hospital. I didn’t want to ask Cookie who her doctor was because I knew it would set off a chain reaction that would ripple through the family and only compound my grief if I was mistaken. I had to wait a few days for the answer. I didn’t give the doctor my phone number because my mother might have answered. I made sure I was the one to pick up the mail from the box in the vestibule every morning. When the envelope finally came I stuck it in my apron pocket and brought everything else—a letter from Carmine and some bills—to the kitchen. I went to my bedroom, the same room I’d shared with my sister Bella as a girl, and sat down on the narrow bed. All my senses seemed sharper that morning—the feel of the chenille bedspread against my bare legs, the rumble of city traffic on the elevated highway a few blocks away, the aroma of onions and garlic from Mama’s cooking, the bitter taste
of bile rising in my throat. I opened the letter and held my breath as I read the results of my pregnancy test. And then I cried.

  The person I was when I’d left Boston for Trinidad was not the woman who returned. I thought at first that it was my pregnancy, the change in the weather and being without Al that made me feel so different. I heard all kinds of stories from aunts and cousins about the discomforts of carrying a baby, but for me, it wasn’t that. My body felt strange—not my own, that was for sure. But the strangeness I felt had more to do with my head than my growing belly.

  I was noticing things—about Boston, about life—that I hadn’t seen before I’d lived in Trinidad. Now I didn’t just stand on the wharf at the edge of my neighborhood staring out at the harbor, wondering what lay beyond the ocean’s horizon. I’d sailed that ocean. Been out of sight of land and all that was familiar. Some people—a lot of people in the North End, I discovered—didn’t even wonder or ask what lies outside the concrete and brick boundaries of their corner of the city. It was enough for them—the daily routine of waking up in their comfortable bed, drinking a cup of Maxwell House coffee with two sugars and cream, getting on the MTA with a pepper-and-egg sandwich in their lunch pail and keeping the circle of people they knew tight around them, not letting in anyone or anything new.