out to touch her curtains. “I’m staying here,” she said, as though saying it aloud would make it so, and she felt a surge of rage so great that it seemed ready to cripple her. “Goddamnit,” she said softly, and then she repeated it, louder. “Goddamnit. I am staying here. I don’t care where the rest of them go. I am staying here.” Tears began to run down her face, the hot tears of rage. She pictured her husband, her children, the chairs and beds and sheets and towels, carted off to the big new house, and she there, alone, in the empty rooms. It was better than imagining herself in those other rooms, none of them smaller than twenty by fifteen, held hostage by John Scanlan.
After a few minutes Joey Martinelli emerged from the trailer and began to walk across the fields. The workmen stared at his back, and fell silent. Even if she had not seen the coffee mug hanging by its handle on his index finger, Connie would have known he was coming to her house. As he got closer he looked up and smiled at her.
“You didn’t have to bring it back right away,” Connie said, opening the back screen door and standing aside to let him in.
“I figured you might want it,” he said, holding out the mug. “I know you girls. My mother has a row of little hooks inside the cabinets to hang the cups. If one hook is empty, it drives her crazy.”
Connie wished her life was that orderly. She could not remember the last time she had bothered to hang the coffee mugs from the little hooks inside her cabinets. “I always liked your mother,” Connie said. “She used to bring cake at Christmas.”
“She still brings it to your father,” Joey said. “She’s convinced he’s starving to death. She used to bring him over little things, gravy, chicken, whatever. One of her girlfriends passed some remark about how she was trying to catch another husband, so she stopped doing it. She says your girl takes care of him anyway.”
“Maria Goretti.”
“The skinny kid, right? With all the hair? She looks something like you but not too much.”
“I don’t know who they look like,” Connie said. “Come on in and have a roll.”
“I just ate,” he said, “but I’ll take some more coffee.”
He sat down at the Formica table and Connie was sorry to see that it still had rings on it from breakfast. She poured coffee into the mug he had returned and put a doughnut on the plate.
“Your husband is in construction?” Joe said.
“Tommy,” said Connie. “He runs a company called First Concrete.”
“With the striped trucks. They’re pretty good. Expensive. His old man owns it.”
“I didn’t know everybody knew that,” Connie said, sitting down opposite him.
“His old man owns everything,” said Joe, wrapping his hands around his coffee cup, and when he saw her face, he added, “Sorry.”
“No, it’s all right,” Connie said. “Tommy’s sort of the black sheep. You know. Because of me.”
“No, really?” said Joe, who knew that this was true because everyone in his mother’s neighborhood said so. He flexed his fingers and studied them as he added, “He got the prize. I know some of the other wives, from dances and stuff. Real Irish girls. Freckles, piano legs, no chest. He got the prize.”
Connie felt the flush begin on her throat. Her lips buzzed with the blood inside them. Finally Joey looked right at her and added, “You were always so pretty,” as though he dared her to contradict him.
“Your brother Jimmy have kids?” Connie finally said, when her breath came back.
“Three,” said Joe, and as if on cue Joseph toddled in from the dining room. “Bear,” he shouted, holding his tattered brown bear aloft.
“Thanks,” Joe said, reaching for the toy, but the baby pulled it back. “No, no,” he said, and Connie lifted him up and kissed his head. “Bear is his security blanket,” she said. “He can’t go anywhere without Bear. Are you ready for a nap, JoJo?” she added.
“No,” Joseph said.
“I gotta go anyhow,” Joey Martinelli said, standing and putting his cup in the sink. “When am I going to teach you to drive?”
“You don’t have to do that,” Connie said. “I wouldn’t have told you I didn’t know how if I knew you were going to think you had to give me driving lessons.”
“No, really, it’ll be fun. I taught my brother. I taught my cousins. We’ll find a parking lot somewhere and