with a sense of his own importance, and it appeared the matter was settled; and for the next week or so there was a vague, pleasant mood of anticipation in the house, of impending change. But perhaps all along my uncle had merely been biding his time: he had taken on again the dangerous, contented air he had whenever he held my father at a disadvantage.
“There’s that
inglese
on the lakeshore trying to sell off his greenhouses,” he said one evening, bland, conversational, not seeming to implicate us in any way in what he was saying. “He’s asking almost nothing for them, he just wants someone to clear them off the property so he can sell it off for houses.”
“If he’s asking almost nothing,” my father said, “it means they’re worth less than nothing. I’ve seen those greenhouses, they’re half rotten as it is. He’d have had to tear them down in a year or two anyway. I doubt anything would be left of them if you had to take them apart and then put them together again.”
“
Mbeh
, if you could get them for nothing like that,” Tsi’Umberto said, with an air of authority, though he was probably just repeating something he’d heard at Longo’s. “For someone starting out it’s not a bad idea.”
“I wouldn’t do it. It’s just taking someone else’s garbage.”
“
Sì
,
sì
,” my uncle said, but with a petulance now, “you always have to have the best.”
“What, you’re not seriously saying
we
should buy them?”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be a fool. Nobody builds in wood any more like that.”
“
Sì
, I’m always the fool,” my uncle said. “I’ll tell you why I’m a fool, because I didn’t see from the first how you’re dragging me into your big ideas just to get your money from the bank.”
“
Ma ‘stu cretin’
, is it possible anyone can be so thickheaded? Do you think I needed your money? You’re worse than your father, idiot that he was, working like a slave all his life on those few acres of stones, and you’ll die and rot poor like him, the way you hold all your stupid pennies in your fist like a schoolboy!”
“Ah,
grazie
, now I understand how you see things!” my uncle said, springing his indignation on my father like a trap. “You always want to be the big man, ah? The big man who married the mayor’s daughter, the big man who came to America. And now you thought you would use your brother to get your money so you could be a big man again, isn’t that it? But I won’t haveany part of it, by Christ, even if I have to break my bones in a factory the rest of my life!”
My father and my uncle didn’t speak to each other again for the rest of the winter. For months we lived under the shadow of their suppressed anger, and in the charged silence that settled over us the household appeared to split in two, my uncle’s family on one side of it, policed there by a violence that seemed intended in its excess as a reproof to my father, and the rest of us shifting like counterweights to the other. A careful pantomime worked itself out like a long wordless argument, separate meals, separate outings, separate work; even Rita had to be claimed now, no twilight space there to hold her in our sudden division. In the past, Rita had always been left at home with one of us whenever there was some party to go to, Fiorina often left as well though almost as if we used her to hide from ourselves the truer reason for Rita’s not coming. But at carnival that year it was Tsi’Umberto’s family that stayed home, Rita instead, as though to make clear whose side of the family she fell on, bundled up in her coat and hat and brought along with my father and Aunt Teresa and me, awkward and shy in the new dress my aunt had bought for her, hanging near me the whole evening in frightened wonder at the world’s sudden largeness and noise. My father hardly spoke, appearing injured by every glance, retreating at once after the meal to a back table to play cards; but still the
“There’s that
inglese
on the lakeshore trying to sell off his greenhouses,” he said one evening, bland, conversational, not seeming to implicate us in any way in what he was saying. “He’s asking almost nothing for them, he just wants someone to clear them off the property so he can sell it off for houses.”
“If he’s asking almost nothing,” my father said, “it means they’re worth less than nothing. I’ve seen those greenhouses, they’re half rotten as it is. He’d have had to tear them down in a year or two anyway. I doubt anything would be left of them if you had to take them apart and then put them together again.”
“
Mbeh
, if you could get them for nothing like that,” Tsi’Umberto said, with an air of authority, though he was probably just repeating something he’d heard at Longo’s. “For someone starting out it’s not a bad idea.”
“I wouldn’t do it. It’s just taking someone else’s garbage.”
“
Sì
,
sì
,” my uncle said, but with a petulance now, “you always have to have the best.”
“What, you’re not seriously saying
we
should buy them?”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be a fool. Nobody builds in wood any more like that.”
“
Sì
, I’m always the fool,” my uncle said. “I’ll tell you why I’m a fool, because I didn’t see from the first how you’re dragging me into your big ideas just to get your money from the bank.”
“
Ma ‘stu cretin’
, is it possible anyone can be so thickheaded? Do you think I needed your money? You’re worse than your father, idiot that he was, working like a slave all his life on those few acres of stones, and you’ll die and rot poor like him, the way you hold all your stupid pennies in your fist like a schoolboy!”
“Ah,
grazie
, now I understand how you see things!” my uncle said, springing his indignation on my father like a trap. “You always want to be the big man, ah? The big man who married the mayor’s daughter, the big man who came to America. And now you thought you would use your brother to get your money so you could be a big man again, isn’t that it? But I won’t haveany part of it, by Christ, even if I have to break my bones in a factory the rest of my life!”
My father and my uncle didn’t speak to each other again for the rest of the winter. For months we lived under the shadow of their suppressed anger, and in the charged silence that settled over us the household appeared to split in two, my uncle’s family on one side of it, policed there by a violence that seemed intended in its excess as a reproof to my father, and the rest of us shifting like counterweights to the other. A careful pantomime worked itself out like a long wordless argument, separate meals, separate outings, separate work; even Rita had to be claimed now, no twilight space there to hold her in our sudden division. In the past, Rita had always been left at home with one of us whenever there was some party to go to, Fiorina often left as well though almost as if we used her to hide from ourselves the truer reason for Rita’s not coming. But at carnival that year it was Tsi’Umberto’s family that stayed home, Rita instead, as though to make clear whose side of the family she fell on, bundled up in her coat and hat and brought along with my father and Aunt Teresa and me, awkward and shy in the new dress my aunt had bought for her, hanging near me the whole evening in frightened wonder at the world’s sudden largeness and noise. My father hardly spoke, appearing injured by every glance, retreating at once after the meal to a back table to play cards; but still the
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