kept his eyes downward, the man merely sneered as he said: “We don’t know no Jet around here!”—and, upon reentering his house, slammed the door behind him.
My father turned toward me slowly, forcing a smile. Then, firmly taking my hand, he led me down the icy steps. I assumed that we were on our way home. But after we had walked a half-block in silence, he said: “Let’s try one more place, that house on the corner.” I protested; but he pulled me toward a two-story clapboard house that, like the other peeling buildings on the block, had brown stains streaking down the white walls beneath the drainpipes, and rusty dented automobiles parked in the driveway, and a muddy yard littered with broken bottles, punctured tires, and assorted household rubbish soundly stuck in the frosty, weed-strewn earth.
“Let’s go home,” I pleaded. But my father moved toward the corner house, where he soon was knocking on the door and, with somewhat less force than before, calling out to Jet. This time, however, there was no response whatsoever. No one came to a window, there was no barking of dogs; it was as if it were a totally abandoned house. My persistent father knocked louder, rapping his gloved knuckles against the white door patched with plywood, causing a hollow echo that rose in the harsh morning air. But from the house, continuing silence.
“Okay,” he said finally, “let’s go.” Relieved, I followed him down the path, then toward the street in the direction of the store. I had seen enough of Jet’s world. But a sense of sadness lingered within me as we walked, for I knew that after we had gotten back to the store on this Saturday, as on other Saturdays when Jet was adrift, I would see my father in the back room remove his jacket and tie, and strip to his undershirt, and then begin on this busiest day of the week to labor as long as he could in the steam of Jet’s machine.
And not only my father, but I as well would be confined—until Jet’sunpredictable return—to the hot and hazy atmosphere where no conversation could be heard above the pounding and hissing of the machines, and where time always passed slowly as my father sharpened the front creases of other men’s pants (while his own tailored trousers became sodden and baggy-kneed), and where I, sitting near him as he expressly wished, listlessly affixed hundreds of cardboard guards onto wire hangers before hooking them along the pipes within reach of the perspiring men.
My father, I unavoidably noticed, lagged behind even the portly gray-haired semi-retired presser whose leisurely pace at other times he had repeatedly criticized; and while this man was at least twenty years my father’s senior, he possessed an enduring stamina that my father clearly lacked. After a half-hour in the steam, my father was a lamentable figure. His eyeglasses were fogged over. His neck seemed to have shrunk within the soaked, sagging noose of his knotted white handkerchief. And after he had extended his slender arms above his head to grip the levers of the machine, he would heave as he pulled downward, straining under the flatiron’s weight, and his face suddenly bore the agonized expression of his favorite saint.
I sometimes wondered, many years later, if there was not a part of him that almost reveled in these moments, these humbling efforts that perhaps put him in touch spiritually with those flagellants he had once described watching intently as a boy, a bedraggled but tenacious multitude crawling uphill on bleeding knees—or those ascetic village elders, among them his grandfather Domenico, who vied for the honor of hoisting on their shoulders the weighty statue of the monk who had extolled the virtues of mortification.
In this period of World War II, with citizens everywhere receptive to sacrificing—and with my father’s widowed mother existing vulnerably in the hills of southern Italy and his brothers in enemy trenches—it was possible that he was
My father turned toward me slowly, forcing a smile. Then, firmly taking my hand, he led me down the icy steps. I assumed that we were on our way home. But after we had walked a half-block in silence, he said: “Let’s try one more place, that house on the corner.” I protested; but he pulled me toward a two-story clapboard house that, like the other peeling buildings on the block, had brown stains streaking down the white walls beneath the drainpipes, and rusty dented automobiles parked in the driveway, and a muddy yard littered with broken bottles, punctured tires, and assorted household rubbish soundly stuck in the frosty, weed-strewn earth.
“Let’s go home,” I pleaded. But my father moved toward the corner house, where he soon was knocking on the door and, with somewhat less force than before, calling out to Jet. This time, however, there was no response whatsoever. No one came to a window, there was no barking of dogs; it was as if it were a totally abandoned house. My persistent father knocked louder, rapping his gloved knuckles against the white door patched with plywood, causing a hollow echo that rose in the harsh morning air. But from the house, continuing silence.
“Okay,” he said finally, “let’s go.” Relieved, I followed him down the path, then toward the street in the direction of the store. I had seen enough of Jet’s world. But a sense of sadness lingered within me as we walked, for I knew that after we had gotten back to the store on this Saturday, as on other Saturdays when Jet was adrift, I would see my father in the back room remove his jacket and tie, and strip to his undershirt, and then begin on this busiest day of the week to labor as long as he could in the steam of Jet’s machine.
And not only my father, but I as well would be confined—until Jet’sunpredictable return—to the hot and hazy atmosphere where no conversation could be heard above the pounding and hissing of the machines, and where time always passed slowly as my father sharpened the front creases of other men’s pants (while his own tailored trousers became sodden and baggy-kneed), and where I, sitting near him as he expressly wished, listlessly affixed hundreds of cardboard guards onto wire hangers before hooking them along the pipes within reach of the perspiring men.
My father, I unavoidably noticed, lagged behind even the portly gray-haired semi-retired presser whose leisurely pace at other times he had repeatedly criticized; and while this man was at least twenty years my father’s senior, he possessed an enduring stamina that my father clearly lacked. After a half-hour in the steam, my father was a lamentable figure. His eyeglasses were fogged over. His neck seemed to have shrunk within the soaked, sagging noose of his knotted white handkerchief. And after he had extended his slender arms above his head to grip the levers of the machine, he would heave as he pulled downward, straining under the flatiron’s weight, and his face suddenly bore the agonized expression of his favorite saint.
I sometimes wondered, many years later, if there was not a part of him that almost reveled in these moments, these humbling efforts that perhaps put him in touch spiritually with those flagellants he had once described watching intently as a boy, a bedraggled but tenacious multitude crawling uphill on bleeding knees—or those ascetic village elders, among them his grandfather Domenico, who vied for the honor of hoisting on their shoulders the weighty statue of the monk who had extolled the virtues of mortification.
In this period of World War II, with citizens everywhere receptive to sacrificing—and with my father’s widowed mother existing vulnerably in the hills of southern Italy and his brothers in enemy trenches—it was possible that he was
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