Mario

Mario by Anne Marcotty page 

Mario I am driving to work. It’s February and a cold drizzle is falling. I pass through Durham center, past the tack and feed store, the Dunkin Donuts, the town green with the pre-Revolutionary War town hall, the Durham Market, the library, the pharmacy and dry cleaner, and the Mobil station. Then I’m driving through the north end of town, Route 17 on my way up to Middletown, past little vinylsided houses with winter-barren vegetable gardens next to old swing sets. One house has bunnies for sale; another, with a hand-painted sign for fresh eggs, has a beagle barking at the traffic through a chain-link fence. Then I see my guy. I see him almost every day, the same guy, walking along the same stretch of road, at the same time. I think of him as “my guy” because I am oddly comforted by his brief but regular appearance in my daily life. I think I would notice if I hadn’t seen him for a while. He’s an old man—eighty at least—and short. His face is a dried apple, shiny and wrinkled, with an overly large nose. He wears a red and black plaid jacket, blue work pants, and a green woolen cap with ear flaps, pulled down low. He walks with a rolling gait that’s neither fast nor slow. Every day, I wave to him and he waves back with a stiff little salute, just as I’ve seen him wave to some of the other route regulars. The part of my mind that is not occupied with preparing for my morning meeting, or busy considering all things with National Public Radio, has probably wondered about him, but I have never been aware of the wondering before. On this day, because of the rain, he has an umbrella, and on this day, when I see him, he’s not walking. He’s standing still, looking at the pair of donkeys who live in a pen in front of the gray house on the hill. I see this old man standing with his umbrella in the cold winter rain, looking at the donkeys as though they were really something worth looking at. And I begin to wonder about him. His name is Mario. That suddenly seems very clear to me. And he’s lived in Durham all his life. He lived there back when it was all farms. Farms and cows and a couple of stores and a church, that’s all. “Mario,” his mother would say when he was twelve, or so, “go down the market. Ask Mr.

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Mario by Anne Marcotty page 

DiNapoli does he have a piece of prosciutto that maybe he can’t sell at the regular price. You know—the little end piece that don’t look so good on a fancy plate.” She would give him a dime and five pennies and he would walk down Route 112, back before it was paved and before it was called Route 17. He would jingle the coins in his pocket as he walked, kicking little rocks while bluebirds swooped back and forth across the road, going about their business of catching flies in the meadow. When he brought back the greasy paper parcel, his mother would take the tough, salty piece of end meat and fry it up with peppers and onions from her garden. “Remember this, Mario. It don’t take too much meat to make a good meal.” She said this every time. When his mother died, Mario had just returned from Europe, now a veteran of the war. His sisters, both married, nagged at him to get his suit fixed for the funeral, “so she can be buried with the respect she deserves,” they said. He had been away. His suit needed cleaning. On Thursday, he took his suit down to the dry cleaners. He thought maybe they could do whatever it was dry cleaners did, but faster, on account of his mother being dead and the funeral being the next day. He said to the young woman—a girl, really—behind the counter, “I’m sorry if this is a bother to you, but I could sure use your help. You see, my mother, she passed on just two days ago, and I—“ “Ohhhh,” she said, touching his forearm. “Your poor mother may she rest in peace.” “So could I have this suit, ah, cleaned before her burial tomorrow?” “Of course. I’ll make sure of it myself. You poor thing, with your mother passing on and all. I’ll make double sure of it, you just leave it to me.” Mario looked over her head into the steamy gloom of the back room, wondering what was making all the clatter and hiss. He had never been in the dry cleaner’s before. The kerosene smell prickled his nose, and he rubbed it. Then he looked at the girl, seeing her for the first time. She smiled at him as though she had been waiting for him to notice her; then, maybe remembering his dead mother, her smile became a sympathetic pout. Mario decided that she looked fine either way, and he hoped she would smile at him again.

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Mario by Anne Marcotty page 

She was not a pretty girl, not in the way he was used to thinking of as pretty. But she had clear, fresh skin and bright eyes. And she was plump, the feminine shape that he preferred. He tried not to notice how her blouse was full to bursting in the front. He focused instead on her hands, which were soft and round and made him wonder what they might feel like, if he were to hold them. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he blurted, and turned to leave. When he reached the door, he stopped, embarrassed at having referred to her as if she was his reason for returning the next day. “I’ll see the suit tomorrow—I’ll be here. For the suit. Tomorrow,” he stammered. She smiled again and he fled, his face burning. That was how Mario met his wife, Marie. Mario and Marie. They laughed about that a lot. That was a big joke for them, a big, happy, see-how-everything-turns-out-perfectly kind of joke. At the time of Mario’s mother’s funeral, Marie was only 16. He waited two years to marry her and almost every day of those two years he walked down the paved road now called Route 17, to the dry cleaner, where she lived with her family in the house above the store. He would go after he finished his day’s work, whatever it had been that day. He mended fences and built sheds, he dug holes and carried boxes, cleared brush and worked a mowing machine at haying time. He could do a lot of things. He went wherever there was work and did whatever he was asked. He also kept up with his mother’s garden, but it didn’t really come back to life until Marie came to live with him. As a wedding present, he gave her a pair of kittens, which she named Jack and Jill, and she laughed merrily at their frantic little games. Her delight, her vivid sweetness, filled the house. He lost himself in her, burying his face against her back at night. Her soft curvy flesh made him think of ripe tomatoes, all fragrant and hot from the sunny garden. There were no babies that first year. It didn’t matter, there was plenty of time for that. Marie had her garden and her kittens. And Mario had Marie. They were nice to each other; they said nice things and took care with each other’s feelings. Marie made sure he had long underwear and gloves in the winter. Mario brought her some chicks in the spring so she could have fresh eggs whenever she wanted. He fixed up the chicken coop and built strawberry frames for her garden.

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There were no babies the next year, either, or the one after that. Mario’s sisters were full of advice: “Don’t eat garlic for seven weeks, then you’ll see,” said one. “Turn your bed so your head is pointing north and you’ll have a boy,” said the other. Mario bought Marie a little goat, who followed her like a puppy. She took in injured animals— squirrels or rabbits or blue jays—and tended them until they were well. Some of them stayed around, never quite wild again, and they would creep out of hiding whenever she went outside. Mario was proud that even the plants and animals loved Marie. He went to church with her on Sundays, and sometimes, after church, they would go with his friend, Joe, to the VFW hall in Meriden. “They make a beautiful spaghetti dinner,” Joe said many times. Mario didn’t know how he could think that the watery sauce and tired gray meatballs were beautiful, but then Joe didn’t have a wife. He didn’t know how good it could be. During the ninth year of their marriage, Marie began to get tired. She said her back hurt and she had a pain down low. Some mornings, she couldn’t seem to wake up and Mario would fix his own breakfast, feed the animals, and go off to work, worried. He worried all day until he returned and she would be moving about the kitchen, making lasagna, and he would be flooded with relief. Until it happened again, a week or so later. She lost weight and her skin became saggy and grayish. One day she said, “Mario. Mario, take me to the doctor. I have an awful pain.” He had bought a truck the year before—a blue Ford—and now he put a little step stool next to it so she could get up on the seat more easily. She winced and cried out and he drove slowly over the ruts and bumps so as not to jar her. The doctor, a young man with big ears and a strangely high-pitched voice, shook his head and said, “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this…” and Mario didn’t hear what the doctor was sorry to have to say because of the roaring in his head that had become a shrieking howl. The cancer spread, hideous blooms “down there,” and the blooms grew and sucked the life from his sweet Marie. Afterwards, all anyone could say to Mario was, “It’s a blessing she went so quickly. This way, she didn’t suffer for long.” But he didn’t see any blessing at all. No blessing anywhere.

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Mario by Anne Marcotty page 

And the animals still needed feeding and the work still needed to be done, and Mario buried his wife and carried on, wanting to die. Joe said, “You should come down the VFW. See some people. I go Tuesdays now. Tony’s been askin’ me where’s Mario. I tell him you’re not doin’ so good since, you know, Marie. He says it’s been, what, two years? He should come down, see some people, Tony says.” Mario went to the VFW hall with Joe on Tuesday night, after work. It was all men there, no wives; he was glad of that, at least, but he didn’t recognize most of them. There was no spaghetti dinner, either, which was also just as well. Joe tried to draw him into a game of cards but he couldn’t concentrate. The chatter of strangers echoed off the linoleum floor; the fluorescent lights made his head hurt. The next day he chopped firewood all day, three cords. It was November and people needed firewood. He tossed the wood into the back of his truck, each toss a perfect rhythmic arc. He delivered two cords, and dumped the wood, leaving it in a pile to be stacked later. The third delivery was to his neighbor, Mrs. Bishop, an elderly woman who needed him to stack, which he did. He liked stacking. He liked how each piece of wood was unique and yet they all fit together with a satisfying thunk, the sum of the parts holding the whole stack as one. He finished early, four o’clock, went home, and parked his truck. For a reason unclear to him, instead of going into the house, he walked down the driveway to the road. He turned south onto the road and kept walking. At each mailbox, each corner fencepost, each cross street, he would tell himself to turn back. By the time he got to the dry cleaner, it was dusk, and the gloom of the November evening made it hard to see clearly. It was better that way. He stopped and stood on the corner and just looked. In the end, it was not as hard as he had thought it would be, to take that walk and look at that building. Perhaps it was the perfect sweetness of his memories that made it bearable, or the fact that the walking and the looking were more physically meaningful than visiting her grave had ever been, but he felt lighter in spirit for having done it. There in front of the dry cleaner in the November gloom, Mario felt a little better.

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Mario by Anne Marcotty page 

It became his habit to walk down Route 17 when he was finished with work. He would think about Marie, unafraid of his sadness, feeling it fully, and honoring her memory with the ritual. As the years passed, the ritual took on its own meaning, setting a rhythm for his days. He still thought about Marie, would never stop, but the edges had blurred, the contrasts dimmed, the habit of memory stronger than the images themselves. He had a cat, named Cat. All his cats since Marie had been named Cat. He went to the VFW hall with Joe, and became friendly with the new guys, guys who talked about Danang and Saigon, not Midway and Normandy. He got older and kept walking. He walks in the mornings, now. It seems pointless to wait until evening, now that he’s no longer working. He brings a carrot to the donkeys that live in front of the gray house; they remind him of Marie’s little goat. There’s a lot of traffic now, too, but he doesn’t mind too much. He sometimes recognizes the cars and their drivers, as they go by. The next day, I’m on my way to work. It’s sunny and a little warmer today, but still cold. It is February, after all. North of Durham center, I see Mario, way up ahead, walking towards me. I can tell it’s him by his red and black jacket, and the fact that he’s there at all. I feel a rush of tenderness toward him. I think about Marie, how sad it was that she died so young. I even feel a little teary, thinking about the fragility of the human condition and how people find ways of carrying on, even when they think they can’t. As I get close to Mario, I wave, as usual, trying in that quick moment to convey my empathy. But today is sunny. And as I wave, I think, but maybe his name isn’t Mario after all. Maybe it’s Lou. And he’s married to Dottie. Yeah, Dottie, that sounds right. And for 53 out of the past 54 years he’s been married to her, Dottie’s been driving him nuts. And it’s worse now that her sister’s come to live with them. He gets out in the mornings just to get away, play his number and get his coffee at the Dunkin Donuts. He figures that all this walking can’t be bad, and it’s maybe even good for him. He’s determined to outlive her. And as I pass my guy, I think, lookin’ good, Lou. Good luck to ya, buddy.

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