Peril

DELLA

Her mother poured the coffee, then sat down. “So, how’s Mike?”

“Fine,” Della said. She wiped a scattering of crumbs from Nicky’s mouth.

Mrs. DaRocca smiled. “They all like graham crackers. You liked them. Your brother.”

Della nodded crisply. “You heard from Chuck?”

“Not in a couple weeks,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “He’s got a new girlfriend. When he has a new girlfriend, he forgets to call.”

Della thought of her kid brother, remembered his tendency to mischief, the way she’d always tried to pull him out of whatever trouble he got himself into. She wished he were home now rather than on some army base out west, and so unable to help her, or even give advice. Unnecessarily, she brushed again at Nicky’s mouth, then glanced at her mother, recognized the look in her eyes.

“You and Mike having trouble,” the old woman said.

It was not a question, but a declaration, and for a moment Della thought it might be easier if it were true. Married trouble stared you in the face. There were ways to deal with it. A priest. A counselor. With married trouble, there was a line of defense, a method for dealing, maybe even a solution somewhere down the road.

“Another woman?” her mother asked.

“No, Ma,” Della said. “Nothing like that.”

“Money?”

“No, Ma,” Della repeated. She started to draw Nicky into her lap.

“Leave him where he is,” Mrs. DaRocca snapped.

Della obeyed instantly, like a little girl.

“Look me in the eye and tell me nothing’s wrong,” the old woman demanded.

Della knew she couldn’t do that.

“It’s not you, is it? You’re not cheating on Mike?”

“No!” Della cried indignantly. “Ma!”

The old woman leaned forward. “So what is it, Della?”

There was no escaping her, and Della knew it. Her only hope was to come up with a story her mother would believe. “It’s my neighbor,” she began, making it up as she went along. “His wife left him. He came over. He thought I might know where she went.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“So, how come you’re upset about this?”

She shrugged, thought fast. “I don’t know. You just get to thinking, you know, about… things.”

“What things you thinking about, Della? This ain’t got nothing to do with you, so what things you thinking about?”

She was like a crab, Della thought, her mother. Once she grabbed on to something, she never let go. “You know, how a person can live with a person and maybe not know… anything. That’s the way it is with this guy.”

“What guy?”

“My neighbor. He didn’t have any idea she was going to leave him.”

“Like he’s the first,” Mrs. DaRocca said with a laugh.

“Anyway, it makes you think.”

The old woman waved her hand. “It makes you think because you’re a worrier, Della. Always worrying about something.”

“Yeah, okay,” Della said, hoping to drop the subject.

But this only made her mother more intent. “Mike, he comes home every night, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you, you make dinner. You see everything’s clean. The other stuff, you know, private. That’s okay too, right?”

“Yeah, Ma, it’s fine.”

The old woman looked at her sternly. “So stop worrying about that neighbor of yours. It ain’t your problem.”

“Right,” Della said. She saw Sara in the city, trying to start over, unaware of the mad dog that was hot on her trail, a vicious old dog that was tracking her relentlessly but one she could not tell Sara about for fear that it would turn on her as well. “Right,” she repeated. “Not my problem.”

And yet if that were true, she wondered, then what was this pain she felt and which seemed to grow larger by the minute. She felt nothing but that deepening distress for a moment, then glanced up and saw that her mother’s eyes were bearing down with the old relentlessness she remembered from her girlhood, questions fired like rockets toward her ever-crumbling defenses, That boy treating you good? You letting that guy touch you? You pregnant?

“Mike raise his hand to you?” the old woman asked sharply.

“No!” Della shot back. “You know Mike. He wouldn’t-”

“Della,” her mother said, cutting her off. “I look at you, and I see scared. Something’s scaring you.” She planted her fleshy arms on the table and leaned forward. “Now, what’s scaring you?”

There was no point in lying to her, Della realized. For nearly forty years, the old lady had seen through her like a sheet of cellophane. “I don’t know what to do, Ma.”

Her mother’s scowl was dark and fearsome. Even sitting, even completely still, she looked as if she were strapping on a gun.

“You tell me right now, Della,” she commanded. “And don’t leave nothing out.”

Della hesitated briefly, then said, “It’s Leo Labriola.”

Her mother looked at her as if she’d just blurted out the ingredients of a secret recipe. “How you know him?”

“My neighbor. Labriola’s his father.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“His wife ran off, like I said, and Mr. Labriola is looking for her. He came to my house. He wanted to know if I knew anything about Sara, that’s my neighbor, Tony’s wife, the one that ran off, who Labriola is looking for. And he… threatened me, Labriola did.”

Her mother’s face seemed to gray and flush at the same time, like firelight on a stone. “He done what?” she asked.

“He threatened me,” Della repeated. “Grabbed my arm. Right there.” She rubbed her arm softly. “He scared me, Ma.” Her face was wreathed in shame. “And I didn’t tell Sara about it. That he was looking for her, I mean. But more than that. The way he’s looking, you know?”

“What way?”

“Like… mean. I didn’t tell Sara about that.”

“How could you tell her? You talked to her?”

“Yeah.”

“You know where she is?”

Della nodded. “But not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“She always talked about the city. I figure that’s where she went.”

Mrs. DaRocca offered a surprisingly bright smile. “I’ll straighten this out, Della,” she said.

“What?” Della asked unbelievingly.

“I’ll straighten it out,” Mrs. DaRocca repeated. She patted her daughter’s arm. “Stop worrying about it.”

And Della, to her vast surprise, did exactly that.