“Ignatius, I’m gonna have to go by the Homestead tomorrow.”
“We shall not deal with those usurers, Mother.” Ignatius was feeling around in the cookie jar. “Something will turn up.”
“Ignatius, honey, they can put me in jail.”
“Ho hum. If you are going to stage one of your hysterical scenes, I shall have to return to the living room. As a matter of fact, I think I will.”
He billowed out again in the direction of the music, the shower shoes flapping loudly against the soles of his huge feet.
“What I’m gonna do with a boy like that?” Mrs. Reilly sadly asked Patrolman Mancuso. “He don’t care about his poor dear mother. Sometimes I think Ignatius wouldn’t mind if they did throw me in jail. He’s got a heart of ice, that boy.”
“You spoiled him,” Patrolman Mancuso said. “A woman’s gotta watch she don’t spoil her kids.”
“How many chirren you got, Mr. Mancuso?”
“Three. Rosalie, Antoinette, and Angelo, Jr.”
“Aw, ain’t that nice. I bet they sweet, huh? Not like Ignatius.” Mrs. Reilly shook her head. “Ignatius was such a precious child. I don’t know what made him change. He used to say to me, ‘Momma, I love you.’ He don’t say that no more.”
“Aw, don’t cry,” Patrolman Mancuso said, deeply moved. “I’ll make you some more coffee.”
“He don’t care if they lock me up,” Mrs. Reilly sniffed. She opened the oven and took out a bottle of muscatel. “You want some nice wine, Mr. Mancuso?”
“No thanks. Being on the force, I gotta make a impression. I gotta always be on the lookout for people, too.”
“You don’t mind?” Mrs. Reilly asked rhetorically and took a long drink from the bottle. Patrolman Mancuso began boiling the milk, hovering over the stove in a very domestic manner. “Sometimes I sure get the blues. Life’s hard. I worked hard, too. I been good.”
“You oughta look on the bright side,” Patrolman Mancuso said.
“I guess so,” Mrs. Reilly said. “Some people got it harder than me, I guess. Like my poor cousin, wonderful woman. Went to mass every day of her life. She got knocked down by a streetcar over on Magazine Street early one morning while she was on her way to Fisherman’s Mass. It was still dark out.”
“Personally, I never let myself get low,” Patrolman Mancuso lied. “You gotta look up. You know what I mean? I got a dangerous line of work.”
“You could get yourself killed.”
“Sometimes I don’t apprehend nobody all day. Sometimes I apprehend the wrong person.”
“Like that old man in front of D. H. Holmes. That’s my fault, Mr. Mancuso. I shoulda guessed Ignatius was wrong all along. It’s just like him. All the time I’m telling him, ‘Ignatius, here, put on this nice shirt. Put on this nice sweater I bought you.’ But he don’t listen. Not that boy. He’s got a head like a rock.”
“Then sometimes I get problems at home. With three kids, my wife’s very nervous.”
“Nerves is a terrible thing. Poor Miss Annie, the next-door lady, she’s got nerves. Always screaming about Ignatius making noise.”
“That’s my wife. Sometimes I gotta get outta the house. If I was another kind of man, sometimes I could really go get myself good and drunk. Just between us.”
“I gotta have my little drink. It relieves the pressure. You know?”
“What I do is go bowl.”
Mrs. Reilly tried to imagine little Patrolman Mancuso with a big bowling ball and said, “You like that, huh?”
“Bowling’s wonderful, Miss Reilly. It takes your mind off things.”
“Oh, my heavens!” a voice shouted from the parlor. “These girls are doubtless prostitutes already. How can they present horrors like this to the public?”
“I wish I had me a hobby like that.”
“You oughta try bowling.”
“Ay-yi-yi. I already got arthuritis in my elbow. I’m too old to play around with them balls. I’d wrench my back.”
“I got a aunt, sixty-five, a grammaw, and she goes bowling all the time. She’s even on a team.”
“Some women are like that. Me, I never was much for sports.”
“Bowling’s more than a sport,” Patrolman Mancuso said defensively. “You meet plenty people over by the alley. Nice people. You could make you some friends.”
“Yeah, but it’s just my luck to drop one of them balls on my toe. I got bum feet already.”
“Next time I go by the alley, I’ll let you know. I’ll bring my aunt. You and me and my aunt, we’ll go down by the alley. Okay?”
“Mother, when was this coffee dripped?” Ignatius demanded, flapping into the kitchen again.
“Just about a hour ago. Why?”
“It certainly tastes brackish.”
“I thought it was very good,” Patrolman Mancuso said. “Just as good as they serve at the French Market. I’m making some more now. You want a cup?”
“Pardon me,” Ignatius said. “Mother, are you going to entertain this gentleman all afternoon? I would like to remind you that I am going to the movies tonight and that I am due at the theater promptly at seven so that I can see the cartoon. I would suggest that you begin preparing something to eat.”
“I better go,” Patrolman Mancuso said.
“Ignatius, you oughta be ashamed,” Mrs. Reilly said in an angry voice. “Me and Mr. Mancuso here just having some coffee. You been nasty all afternoon. You don’t care where I raise that money. You don’t care if they lock me up. You don’t care about nothing.”
“Am I going to be attacked in my own home before a stranger with a false beard?”
“My heart’s broke.”
“Oh, really.” Ignatius turned on Patrolman Mancuso. “Will you kindly leave? You are inciting my mother.”
“Mr. Mancuso’s not doing nothing but being nice.”
“I better go,” Patrolman Mancuso said apologetically.
“I’ll get that money,” Mrs. Reilly screamed. “I’ll sell this house. I’ll sell it out from under you, boy. I’ll go stay by a old folks’ home.”
She grabbed an end of the oilcloth and wiped her eyes.
“If you do not leave,” Ignatius said to Patrolman Mancuso, who was hooking on his beard, “I shall call the police.”
“He is the police, stupid.”
“This is totally absurd,” Ignatius said and flapped away. “I am going to my room.”
He slammed his door and snatched a Big Chief tablet from the floor. Throwing himself back among the pillows on the bed, he began doodling on a yellowed page. After almost thirty minutes of pulling at his hair and chewing on the pencil, he began to compose a paragraph.
Were Hroswitha with us today, we would all look to her for counsel and guidance. From the austerity and tranquility of her medieval world, the penetrating gaze of this legendary Sybil of a holy nun would exorcise the horrors which materialize before our eyes in the name of television. If we could only juxtapose one eyeball of this sanctified woman and a television tube, both being roughly of the same shape and design, what a phantasmagoria of exploding electrodes would occur. The images of those lasciviously gyrating children would disintegrate into so many ions and molecules, thereby effecting the catharsis which the tragedy of the debauching of the innocent necessarily demands.
Mrs. Reilly stood in the hall looking at the DO NOT DISTURB sign printed on a sheet of Big Chief paper and stuck to the door by an old flesh-colored Band-aid.
“Ignatius, let me in there, boy,” she screamed.
“Let you in here?” Ignatius said through the door. “Of course I won’t. I am occupied at the moment with an especially succinct passage.”
“You let me in.”
“You know that you are never allowed in here.”
Mrs. Reilly pounded at the door.
“I don’t know what is happening to you, Mother, but I suspect that you are momentarily deranged. Now that I think of it, I am too frightened to open the door. You may have a knife or a broken wine bottle.”
“Open up this door, Ignatius.”
“Oh, my valve! It’s closing!” Ignatius groaned loudly. “Are you satisfied now that you have ruined me for the rest of the evening?”