The Fig Tree

The town of Neponset felt colder than usual the winter of my sophomore year, home from North Adams State, baby brother to five raven-haired Petrillo women: Maria, Cora, Helen, Sue, and Mina. I ached for their attention as I yanked sacks of dirty laundry out of my car, wanting each one to run out the front door and greet me with a hug, but they were all living in other states, married, divorced, with kids, without.
Disappointment on her face, my mother's first comment set the tone. "Couldn’t stay at your girlfriend’s, had to come here?”
My girlfriend had dumped me. “Ma, it’s Christmas. I thought you wanted me here.”
“Talk to your father. He wanted to go to Bermuda. Just the two of us. We’ve never done that.”
“Is that why the girls aren’t around?”
As she nodded, I could see she missed them, too. Christmas had always been a loud affair, though I doubt she missed all the cooking. I gave her a hug, but she remained frosty. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I would have just stayed in the Berkshires.”
“I’ll get a little fake tree. We’ll get so drunk on Eggnog it’ll feel like Bermuda.”
“Dude, thanks for the guilt trip.”
“Dude,” she said, mocking me, “no guilt intended.”
I smirked at her. She smirked back. I was at that age, lots of smirking. Soon, I’d be twenty. Not only cool but enlightened. Much of what I pondered began and ended with the idea of enlightenment. I'd been reading McTeague. To me, this classic was not only about greed, but about failure on a grand scale. Failure led to enlightenment. I had lousy grades. I was on my way.
My father gave me a hug and a pat on the back. I was still his only boy. Neither he nor my mother looked older. They looked the same. They never looked tired and seldom expressed anything I hadn't heard before. After nineteen years, nothing had changed in their lives. I had them down pat.
I gave Dad a hearty whack in the side; his frame a big solid target. He worked as a mason, and at six-three stood an inch taller than me and remained fit. Our relationship had always been physical. We roughhoused, as Mom called it. Dad roughhoused with my sisters, too, but with me, the bambino there was a loving joust whenever we got together.
A wince of pain flashed across his face. I had whacked him pretty hard. I asked if he was okay. He waved me off, excused himself and went into the bathroom. That's when my mother told me about his gallbladder operation.
"Had a stone removed," she said. "You two, like Frick and Frack, what am I gonna do?"
"Ma, I didn't know. You have to tell me these things."
Mom went to the bedroom to check on him. I heard her argue that Dad should see his doctor, just to be sure. After a few minutes, she returned to the kitchen to tell me I hadn’t opened any sutures. Dad was lying down, needed rest.
“Make your own dinner,” she said. “And tomorrow, make sure you apologize.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Apologize. Tomorrow.”
One-word sentences meant Mom was serious. My father appeared in the kitchen.
"All better?" I asked.
It was a dismal nod. My mother snapped at him. “What are you doing out of bed? Get back there. You just had a part removed.”
This cracked me up. “A part? He's not a car, you know.”
“I’m fine,” said Dad. He approached me, told me to stand up, wanted a good look. So I stood and before I could defend myself he landed a right hook to my ribcage.
“You took me off guard,” he said. "I'm your father, don't ever do that again."
"Dad, Jesus, I think you broke one of my ribs."
"Don't Jesus me. I'll break ‘em all if you don't wise up."
“I didn’t know about Bermuda.”
“This isn’t about that,” he said.
Mom added, “Besides, we never told you. It’d be different if we told you.”
He’d known where to strike. Nothing broken, but I'd be sore a few days. “Then why'd you slug me?”
“You should never, ever, take someone off guard, not unless you're in a real fight, on the street. And even then sucker-punching a guy is a chickenshit thing to do. Now rub it out, you'll have a bruise there for sure. You should show more respect, Paulie.”
“Don’t call me Paulie.”
“Is this over?” Mom asked. “Can this be over now?”
Dad's ears were crimson. “What’s for dinner?”
“You’re all better now, is that it?" asked Mom. "Just like that, the lame can walk."
“I’m fine. How many times I need to say it?”
I had to shout to silence them. “Stop bickering. I’m getting back in the car if all you’re gonna do is bicker the whole time I’m here.”
That silenced them, sure enough. With the air clear, I apologized to my father, “I’m sorry I caught you off guard.”
He shrugged, cuffed me lightly against the cheek with an open hand. “Make a man out of you yet.” He looked me in the eye. “I got some big news.”
“What’s that?”
“At dinner,” he said. Then he walked away.
And so it went in the Petrillo house. At dinner Dad popped the big news as if the Pope himself had passed over the house on a kite.
“I bought an air mattress.”
“That’s the big news?”
“Let him talk,” said Mom. “You never let him talk.”
My father tried to smack me in the head with the back of his hand. I dodged the blow. After nineteen years of such dinnertime love taps I'd developed quick reflexes. He seemed disappointed that I'd outsmarted him.
"I'm glad you're okay," I said.
“Less talk," he said. "More eat.”
I'd heard that line a million times; I was definitely home. “What kind of air mattress? What for?”
My mother said, “You’ll see. After dinner.”
After two helpings of Mom's ravioli, I brought my laundry and travel bags upstairs to what I thought would be my bedroom. It was a figment of its former self, all the bedrooms were. The walls bare, the closets emptied. Every lick of furniture, including the beds -- all those romps and pajama parties between my sisters, those childhood hours in my own little sanctuary -- gone. And cold, as if I’d ventured into another climate.
I went downstairs to my mother, whining, injured. At the sink, she washed dishes. My father, at last, was lying down.
“Ma, what the hell is going on?"
"I'm washing up, what's it look like? You know, I don't miss slaving over dinner for all you kids."
"Get a dishwasher."
"Very funny."
"Then let me help."
"No. You'll break them."
"Then don't complain."
"What do you want, Paulie?"
"My name is Paul.”
“After the apostle, I should know. Your father wanted to name you Rocky.”
“Not funny.”
“But it’s true, you ask him.”
“Ma, it’s so cold up there I can see my freakin’ breath. And where’s all the furniture? There’s no bed up there. And my baseball cards? You didn't throw out my collection, did you?”
“Take a hint,” said Mom. "And don't use that language with me in my house."
“Freaking is not a swear word.”
“In my book it is.”
“Ma, some of those cards were worth money.”
“You and your cards. It’s about time you grew up.”
“What am I supposed to sleep on? It’s freezing up there.”
My mother shrugged. My father showed perfect timing as he moped into the kitchen with a deflated look in his eyes. I could tell he’d been dreading this moment. He’d lost the argument about keeping the card collection.
"Dad, my Yogi Berra? Jackie Robinson? Pete Rose rookie year? Yaz?"
Dad's brown eyes were solemn. I couldn't face them, didn’t feel like a man. I'd seen that look only at funerals. He nodded and blew a bullish sigh through his nose. He shot a glance at Mom to tell her I told you so. He looked back at me as if to apologize.
“Was it your idea?” I asked Mom. "Did you sell the cards or chuck them out?"
“Enough with the cards already, they're just paper."
"No they're not!"
My father clapped me on the shoulder. "Calm down, it's not the end of the world."
"It was nobody’s idea,” said Mom. “We don’t use that part of the house anymore.”
“Saves on the heating bill,” said Dad. “These operations, you know, they’re expensive. The insurance didn’t cover all of it.”
“Sticker shock,” said Mom.
“So I gotta sleep on the floor?”
They both nodded. Then I remembered the air mattress mentioned at dinner.
“It’s in your Mom's car,” said Dad. He dragged himself back to his bedroom.
I looked at my mother. “In the trunk,” she said.
“The air mattress?”
“Yes, the air mattress.”
“So that's all?”
“Worse than prison, I know,” said Mom. “But you just remember Saint Paul was a martyr. And for a good cause.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you kids, you don’t know what it’s like to go without.”
I smirked at her as I had for nineteen years, but she knew she was right. She didn’t bother to smirk back.
The air mattress, like a flotation device from the Queen Mary, would need Dad's keg-shaped vacuum to inflate it, but Dad was up and about at this point and wouldn't let me use it. Touchy and possessive about certain tools bought with his hard-earned money, not even Mom was allowed to run his Artoo Deetoo robot of a vacuum.
I followed him upstairs, lugging the heavy appliance. He waited as I ran down the stairs and brought up the air mattress. By this time, the vacuum plugged in, Dad had turned it on without knowing the hose was attached to the expulsion hole. There was a full bag in the tank, apparently. Fur-balls, lint, spikes and splinters of dust had been propelled into the air, fanning out like a cloud. I stormed downstairs, yelling at my father all the way, "How can you be so stupid?" And he yelled right back, told me to shut up and called me half-a-dozen filthy names in Italian.
My mother had heard everything. With one pointing motion of her arm she sent me right back upstairs.
Dad was sweeping up the dust. I took the broom from him and finished the job while he started to inflate the mattress. I sensed that he’d cooled off, though he was the kind of man fueled dawn to dusk by a simmering anger. We didn’t speak, but in the time needed to inflate the mattress we had mined a truce.
He stood in that cold room, beaming, proud of his raft of an air mattress. When I touched it, my hand stuck to goo smeared all over the rubberized vinyl. I pulled it away.
“Wait, that's tar. I have to sleep on tar? I thought you just bought this thing.”
“I did."
“But it’s not even new.”
Dad shrugged. He’d lived through the Depression. “Why should it be?”
I got down on my knees and listened to the mattress. It sounded like an old radiator. “Dad, it’s leaking in about six places."
"It’s not losing air," he said.
"It won’t last more than an hour.”
“Yes, it will.”
“What? You can’t hear the leaks?”
Dad shrugged. “Only gave five bucks for it.”
“It’s a worthless piece of shit.”
Now, I'd really ticked him off. He glared at me. “I bought it for you,” he said, drilling a finger into my chest. “You want it, use it. You don’t, sleep on the floor.”
“But, Dad.”
“Don’t but Dad me. I wanted to go to Bermuda.”
Then he left the room.
Damn that frigid room. In order to sleep there, I’d driven five hours through a sleet storm along Route 2, hardly easy sledding. For the past month, I’d been dreaming of mistletoe and hot cider and the languid sunshine of winter afternoons, anything to stop obsessing over final exams and term papers. I’d finished out the semester with low grades, but at least I had passed my courses.
Where was Christmas? Where was my bedroom?
Fully dressed, shivering, I lay steeped in a sulky fog of self-pity. Hank Aaron. Nolan Ryan. Roger Clemens. How could she have just thrown them away? If only one of my sisters had been home to back up my father; together, they would have convinced Mom to change her mind. I curled into a ball, but couldn't sleep.
I crept downstairs to find my parents napping. In the kitchen, everything was scrubbed to a hard shine and far too clean for me, accustomed as I was to an army of empties in the sink, lengths of pizza crust stuck between sofa cushions. I went to the living room for warmth, the light dim and rosy, Christmas cards taped around the front door. One of Mom’s books, Sins Of The Fathers lay face down on the end table under her reading lamp. I picked it up and out fell a photograph that Mom must have been using as a bookmark.
Unlike the book, which didn’t interest me, the photo, black and white, creased, its edges serrated, had an antique aura about it, a scent of the timeworn that I’ve always found appealing. I felt a pang, missing my baseball cards. For a moment, I entertained a cruel revengeful impulse to rip the photo into tiny pieces. After clicking on the lamp and taking a closer look, I changed my mind.
Not just any photo, this was an image of an old man in a felt hat, baggy wool trousers, a dark blazer, a long face shriveled like a walnut, immense hands wrapped around a hoe’s wooden handle. He stood at the edge of a plowed hillside, leaning on his hoe, a look in his eyes that spoke of fatigue and a great warm misery. Next to the old man stood a boy, skinny, nervous, rigid, arms at his side, hair matted to his head and parted down the middle. The boy wore a long-sleeved white shirt buttoned to the top, and his posture next to the old man reminded me of the way I as a boy stood next to a priest after I'd made my first communion. I knew why that boy stood like that. He’d listened to his mother; he’d obeyed a command to be respectful, humble and afraid.
I turned the picture over. To my surprise, in my father’s handwriting were the words: Fico, fi, fica, fie, ficus, Ficus carica. Written beneath them was Papa near the end. Luke. Chapter 11, Verses 9 to 13. What had I stumbled upon? I turned the photo over and over. This peasant farmer had to be my grandfather, but I couldn’t be sure since I’d never met the man nor seen a picture of him. He’d died shortly before my grandmother, near Naples. And as a ten-year-old, my father had been sent to America on a ship, where he’d been raised by an aunt in Boston's North End.
The boy in the photo was my Dad, all of eight years old, standing with his Dad. Papa near the end. I’d uncovered a mystery, of sorts. I felt, at first, a twinge of sadness. Then I felt quietly elated, and wanted to know more.
I heard the sound of my mother coming out of her bedroom. I hurried the photo back into her book, sat up straight and pretended to nap as she, in her robe, entered the living room. I couldn't look her in the eye.
“What's the prodigal son doing up so late?”
I mumbled that I needed a blanket.
“I think all that stuff’s been thrown out. Let me ask your father.”
She went into the bedroom, was gone about a minute, and came back.
"What he say?"
"He's sleeping."
She put on slippers and went out to the back porch. I tried to follow her.
"Stay there. I'll be right back."
She returned with a small square pillow that stunk of urine and dog hair. I recognized it as the pillow my sister Mina's mutt had slept on for at least a decade.
"That's King's. What? I gotta eat out of his dish, too?"
“It won’t kill you.”
“I can't sleep on that smelly thing. Besides, I'm here for three weeks.”
“Then get a job. Make yourself useful."
"It's my vacation."
"Oh, wait, I remember, there’s a blanket in the basement.”
“I’ll get it.”
“No,” she said. “It’s a mess down there. I know exactly where it is.”
The basement, like the garage, was full of junk. Yet the upstairs of the house was a mausoleum. It made no sense, but I kept my lips sealed. I thought about the photo and felt better.
Mom returned empty-handed from the basement. "I'll try the garage," she said.
I couldn't get a word in. She was atoning, in her own small way.
She brought me a frayed blanket smeared with motor oil. It was smaller than King's old pillow. I recognized it immediately.
“Are you kidding?”
“All I could find,” she said.
It was a blanket I’d used many times with my father as a sling for carrying boulders. Dad used the boulders for the stone wall he was constantly building and repairing out back. He kept the blanket behind the truck's seat, on the driver's side.
I don't think my Dad ever saw a junk pile or a boulder he didn’t like. We’d be out driving any time of day and he’d stop at a trash pile, dump-pick like an old pro, chuck his treasure in the back of his pick-up and drive off. That’s why his basement and garage were packed to the gills. I’d warn him that wood stored in garage rafters was a fire hazard. He’d reply, “That’s good wood. What do you know about good wood?”
"C'mon, Ma, I can't use this thing."
"You can and you will."
“Thanks but no thanks.” I left her with the blanket and went back upstairs. I put on my coat, gloves, scarf and wool cap. Then I shaped one sack of dirty laundry into a lumpy mattress. I took the other sack, emptied out a few towels, and flattened it out. Using the towels and the flattened sack as a blanket, I pulled the wool cap down over my eyes, and wrapped myself inside my makeshift blankets and mattress. Lying in a fetal position, shivering a bit, I managed to slow my breathing and eventually conked out.
It was dark, early in the morning when I woke up, kidneys aching, teeth clenched, but rested. I took off my gloves and blew into my fists. I checked my watch. It was 4:30, usually when my mother got up. I assumed I'd find her in the kitchen, savoring what she called her morning time.
There, alone with the dawn, seated on a high stool, her back to me and a cup and saucer on her lap, she gazed out the window above the sink. She, unlike Dad, was only half-Italian, on her mother’s side. She was Abenaki Indian on her father’s side, with one brother in Missouri who I’d never met. My Dad liked to say that Mom was a ringer for the actress Myrna Loy: tall, finely boned, an arresting kindness in those hazel eyes that softened her otherwise piercing features. I always thought Mom was beautiful, and so were my sisters, but I’d never summoned enough courage to tell them. Now wasn’t the time, but at that moment I wanted to give to my mother, tell her about the photo, let her know I cared about her wellbeing.
The kitchen, so clean, felt warmed by the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Mom looked so lonely there. I could forgive her, after all, and I could extend myself in a small way. It had to be difficult at her age, nursing an old salt like Dad back from an operation.
As soon as she eyed me she grew shrill and remarked, “Can’t sleep on my couch.”
I must have looked blue around the gills, didn’t pretend to be cold. “Don’t we have any blankets anywhere? You used to have a closet full.”
This softened her, a bit. “I think they’re being used, but let me check.”
Spry and sharp at 4:30, she trooped downstairs but returned empty-handed.
"Nothing?"
"We’ll take care of it later," she said. "Just go and rest. Don’t college kids sleep until noon, anyway?”
“I can’t. Too much on my mind.”
“Since when?”
“Since Penny dumped me.”
“She did?”
I made a show of my maudlin self-pity. “Like a hot rock.”
Mom poured me a cup of coffee. As she watched me sip it, she chuckled and grinned, the color rising in her pinched face.
“What’s funny about that?”
“She didn’t dump you,” said Mom. "You dumped her."
“How do you know?”
“She was sleeping around, wasn’t she? And you found out."
"But she still dumped me."
"Good riddance to bad rubbish. Didn’t I tell you she wasn’t right? Didn’t I?”
I couldn’t argue. I’d brought Penny home during the summer, showed her off, and neither Mom nor Dad had been impressed. For a change, I didn’t smirk. “Yeah, I know. Let’s talk about something else.”
“You brought it up. Let that be a lesson. You think your father and I don’t know about these things, but we do, believe me.”
“Then why are you guys doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“No blankets, freezing cold upstairs, nothing up there, at all.”
Mom sipped her coffee, and thought for a moment. She shook her head as if she didn’t have an answer. “It’s a long story. You talk to your father. It’s his fig tree.”
“What’s a fig tree got to do with it?”
“Oh, Paulie, you don’t really know your father. Not really.”
“Yeah, I do.”
Mom grinned. We both knew she’d been right. “He got it this fall, on the anniversary of the day your grandfather passed. It’s on the hill out back. He tells me they’re not really right for New England weather.”
“But why a fig tree? Why not pears or apples?”
“That’s your father. The old country. Why don’t you ask him about it?”
Now I had a connection, though tenuous, to the photo. Words such as ficus on the had to be Latin, or Italian, for fig. I hurried to the back porch, slipped into boots, turned on the yellow light and stepped into the darkness.
Crunching along on a weak crust of snow, I got close enough to the hill to see a crooked finger of a leafless fig tree. Around the trunk of the fig, he’d bundled three blankets, held together with duct tape. Beyond the fig ran my father’s grape vines. Their limbs pruned back for winter, they stood in an even row along the wood and wire trellis I’d helped him build when I was about ten. My father had again taped blankets with duct tape and wrapped them around the base of each vine. Sleet glazed the blankets silver. There had to be twelve of them, of different colors and sizes.
This wasn't about blankets. This was about my grandfather, the first image of him I’d ever really seen. I was seeing my father, as well, as if for the first time.
I heard the crunch of feet in the snow. I turned around. There he stood hairy chest and all, in a sleeveless T-shirt, boxer shorts, and unlaced boots with their tongues hanging out. He sleepily scratched his privates as if vacationing, indeed, in Bermuda.
"That's my tree. Touch one of those blankets I'll break every bone in your head."
I’d trespassed on sacred ground. I spoke quickly, smiling at him. “Dad, it’s okay. C'mon, go inside, you’ll catch pneumonia. Besides, what are the neighbors gonna think?”
Startled by my cautious yet cheerful response, he needed a moment to reflect on it. He looked at me for what seemed a long time, and then he grinned and shrugged, ever loose and a little sloppy, as he had been all his life.
I slapped my arm around his shoulders. I kept smiling and commented, "Screw the neighbors, right?"
He let me guide him back inside.

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