Household Saints by Francine Prose

exclude him from a private world which held no room for anyone but women and their unborn children.
    The apartment smelled different, food smells mingled with the scented candles burning perpetually on the mantelpiece. Each night, Catherine knelt briefly at the altar before coming to bed.
    “Since when are you so hot on the saints?” he’d asked her one night.
    “For protection.” She’d pointed at her stomach.
    “What do you need protection from?” Joseph laughed. “Me?”
    When Catherine turned away from him, he’d noticed that she smelled different too; the familiar aroma of her flesh was gone, replaced by the chaste cold scent of wintergreen soap. Right then, he’d known that their lovemaking was over till after the baby was born—just as he’d known that she wouldn’t drink a glass of Strega for the New Year without consulting his mother.
    “I’m going out. You want anything?” He left without waiting for an answer.
    Outside, he picked his way across the icy asphalt and climbed the stairs to the Falconetti apartment, where he found Lino and Nicky drinking at the kitchen table. The house was a mess, but the only thing Joseph noticed was the pattern of circular rust stains on the bare shelves. He realized they’d been left there by Catherine’s plants. This thought made him so unaccountably miserable that he felt as if she were dead, and had to remind himself that she was safe at home, reading about Judy Garland’s new baby.
    “You gentlemen care to play some pinochle?” he said.
    “Sure,” said Lino. “I’ll talk to Manzone tomorrow. Your place?”
    “Too cold.” It depressed Joseph to think of playing in back of the shop.
    “Then I’d be honored.” Lino swung his arm to offer the comforts of his home.
    The next night, Frank Manzone showed up with half a dozen bottles of wine. But now it was the Falconettis’ responsibility, as hosts, to stay sober enough to keep an eye on things. Consequently their game improved, and the pinochle was no longer the nightly slaughter of before. Sometimes Joseph and Frank won, sometimes the Falconettis.
    Unaccustomed to losing, Joseph took it badly. He drank himself into black, self-pitying moods and, at the end of the games, paid his debts so resentfully that often the Falconettis told him to keep his money, and he kept it. He knew a thousand ways of cheating, but for the first time in his life was afraid of getting caught.
    One wet, chilly evening, early in March, Joseph lost every hand. He was down ten dollars when he stood and said, “That’s it. I haven’t seen a picture card all night. I feel like somebody’s trying to tell me something.”
    “What’s the matter, Santangelo?” said Lino. “You getting psychic?”
    “On my mother’s side,” said Joseph, then shivered. Maybe he was getting psychic. Though Catherine wasn’t due for another month, somehow he felt it was starting…. He looked out the window and up at his apartment. Every light was blazing.
    “Jesus.” He grabbed his overcoat and rushed out the door. “I’ll see you guys later.”
    The living room was deserted, the door to his bedroom shut; from behind it came the muffled sound of his mother’s footsteps. A dozen candles were burning on the altar. The place smelled of Lysol. Then he heard a moan so low and distant, it could have been the wind.
    He ran down the hall toward the bedroom, but stopped halfway there. He’d heard it said that laboring women blame their husbands for every pain and swear between contractions that they’ll never let a man touch them again. He retreated to the living room, where he tried unsuccessfully to make himself comfortable, but kept jumping up at every sound—his nervousness compounded by the embarrassment of acting like the old cliché, the comedian playing expectant father. All he really knew about childbirth was what he’d seen in the movies, the kindly country doc saying, “Don’t just stand there! Heat up the water and get some