The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante Page B

ago, and Harriet and her mother had long since made an adjustment to the marriage. They corresponded, talked by telephone, and our two sons spent frequent summers with their grandmother in San Elmo. But Henry Molise was anathema. His name, his books, his films were never discussed in the Dietrich house. Whenever we visited San Elmo, Harriet stayed at her mother’s house and I lived with my parents. However, four years ago Hilda Dietrich was laid low by pneumonia and Harriet and I flew up because her doctor said it was critical and advised us to come. It was the first and last time I stayed in the Dietrich house.
    I avoided the sick woman as much as possible, playing golf by day, staying out of sight, careful not to agitate her condition. To the doctor’s amazement she was well and on her feet two days after we arrived. He called it a miracle of antibiotics, but I knew better. Hilda Dietrich had simply willed herself back to health in order to get me out from under her roof. As we left for home she stepped out on the porch to kiss Harriet good-bye and thank her for coming.
    Ignoring my hand, she said, “Good-bye, Mr. Malice.”
    “Molise,” I corrected.
    She smiled wickedly. “Oh, what’s the difference!”
    We descended the stairs to a waiting taxi.
    “Bitch,” I said.
    “Be tolerant,” Harriet said.
    “Bitch.”
     
     
    I rang Hilda Dietrich’s door chimes four times before the curtains parted and the old lady’s white face appeared behind the glass door, her cold eyes widening in annoyance. She stood there, staring, making no move to open the door.
    I said, “Good morning.”
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “Harriet asked me to drop by.”
    “What on earth for?”
    “Just a visit. To see how you’re getting along.”
    She hesitated. “I’m very busy now. Tell Harriet I’m getting along fine.”
    “I’ll only stay a moment.”
    “Some other time, Mr. Malice.”
    “Molise,” I pronounced. “With an o.”
    “As long as you’re here, I wish you’d take your golf clubs with you.”
    I had left the clubs when we visited during her illness. Deliberately, for I liked the local course but not the nuisance of traveling with golf clubs. Besides, I had another set at home.
    “I’d rather leave them here, if they’re not in the way.”
    “They most certainly are,” she snapped.
    “In that case, I’ll take them away,” I said, expecting her to open the door.
    “You’ll find them in the toolhouse.”
    The conversation came to a frozen halt as we stared at one another and I felt the boil of blood in my throat, the urge to take her corded old neck in my two hands and break it.
    The depth of her dislike was unfathomable. Harriet had said she was “changed.” Was this the change, that she hated me more? What had I done to this woman? Had I been cruel to her daughter, or caught in the sack with another woman, the measure of a mother’s bitterness would have been understandable. But there was more than hatred in those aged, glittering eyes. Fear was there, paranoia, a sickening obsession, the dread that I might slash her with a knife, Italian-style. Nothing I said or did would rid it from her mind, and it left me sickened and enraged.
    I turned away, quickly descending the porch stairs and hurrying around the house to the toolshed. My golf clubs! I had tucked them out of the way in the far corner of a bedroom closet. My clubs! My beautiful custom-made Stan Thompsons, four woods, nine irons, with special grips, featherlike graphite shafts—expensive, perfectly balanced weapons that fired a ball true and far.
    And there they were, on the moist adobe floor of the toolhouse, the leather bag flaking apart as I lifted it. Shocking. A disaster. As sacrilegious as spitting out the sacred host. Only a golfer could comprehend this wanton, brutal crime. Every club was rusted, every grip peeling away from the shaft. It was more than the murder of golf clubs. It was an attack on me, my life, my pleasure. Only a