The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante Page B

stonemasons.”
    “No.”
    “Mario’s boys don’t care for it either. Virgil’s boy wants to play the piano and Stella has all girls. He wants a stonemason so bad, poor man. If we had just one in the family I think he’d quit drinking. All his prayers would be answered.”
    “He prays?”
    “Never. Or goes to mass.” Her eyes fixed me searchingly. “Do you go to mass, Henry?”
    I had anticipated it. “Every Sunday. Like clockwork.”
    “And your boys?”
    “In the same pew with me and their mother, every Sunday.”
    She almost sailed through the ceiling straight for celestial bliss, but she suddenly caught herself, her face growing serious. “You’re lying, Henry. Your wife never turned Catholic.”
    “I’m working on it. Takes time.”
    She sat down, sighing, disappointed, pouring a bit of wine into a glass. “No Catholics. No stonemasons. Dear God, whatever happened?”
    She reached for my hand and folded it within her dry, warm palms, her voice compassionate and imploring. “Talk to your father, Henry. Make him go back to Our Lord. There isn’t much time. When you’re his age you never know from one hour to the next. And what’ll I do when he goes, worrying about where he went?”
    “Why don’t you ask Father Martin to talk to him. That’s his business, saving souls.”
    “He’s been here lots of times. All they do is fight. Your father has no respect. It’s the old country style. He laughs.”
    “Then leave him alone.”
    “I hope he goes first. Nobody can put up with him but me. Worse than a child: iron the sheets but not the pillow cases. Starch the cuffs but not the collars. Shine his shoes, trim his mustache, rub his feet, cut his hair, hot water bottle in his bed. You know what he’s got now? A bell, by his bed. Every night it rings for something: bring me a glass of wine, rub my back, make me some soup. When I’m gone you think Stella’ll do all that?”
    The bell puzzled me.
    “Don’t you sleep together?”
    “He threw me out.”
    “Why?”
    “How should I know? I wouldn’t touch him anyway.” She raced ahead: “Do you know he takes enemas with warm wine, and eats raw eggs in the morning?”
    “Nauseating.”
    “See what I mean?”
    A horn sounded from the street.
    “That’s Virgil. Tell him about the gnocchi.”
    I walked out on the porch and saw my brother Virgil sitting in his station wagon under the street lamp. I waved him to come in and he motioned me toward the car.
    His old wagon was fender-dented, the wood paneling scraped and peeling. We shook hands through the window. We were more like classmates than brothers. Neither of us liked to think of the other, and in that sense we were nonexistent to one another. But he envied me, my lifestyle, my small success that had taken me away from San Elmo. I wasn’t sure he hated me, but I was certain he disliked me.
    He was porcine now, his navel packed tight against the steering wheel. At forty-seven he looked ten years older, his hair fast vanishing—full at the temples, bald and glistening over the top. He had not married until thirty-five and now he was the father of four girls and a boy. I could smell them as I thrust my head inside the car, the sour taint of vomit and diapers. All the symbols of family joy were piled helter-skelter in the back of the wagon—playpen, tricycles, toys, diapers, blankets.
    My brother Virgil! The genius of the family, destined to be a millionaire, straight out of high school with scholastic awards, honored by the faculty and immediately accepted as a clerk in San Elmo’s only independent bank. After nearly thirty years with the same firm he now managed the Loan Department, and the future was dim indeed, for the president’s three sons, Stanford-educated, had come upon the scene. I felt pity for the guy, but at the same time I thanked God all that baby litter in the back of his car was long gone from my own life.
    “How’s everything?”
    He smiled in a way that bent his mouth out of