An Italian Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

him to stop apologizing. Was it them he was talking about? Soul mates? When he turned and looked at her out there, something had happened to her. Was he saying it had happened to him as well? Was this what people meant by love? Josephine wondered. But by the time she raced outside, he was gone.
    THE WHOLE NEXT WEEK, as first the rag man, then the coal man, came, Josephine thought about soul mates. Two people wandering the Earth, searching for each other. Hadn’t he said soul mates recognize each other immediately? She fed her children and slaughtered a chicken and sewed new dresses for the older girls and watched her fat husband eating, slurping and chomping. Maybe she had married Vincenzo simply to get her to America on that Friday when Tommy Petrocelli would find her. Soul mates, reaching across time and continents. She wondered what Father Leone thought of this idea. Did souls have mates?
    Tino the Turnip left her a half-rotten pineapple. Jacques LaSalle clanked by, his penis swinging. Josephine asked about Alfredo Petrocelli. Had anyone heard anything about him? Was he better? And although she didn’t wish Alfredo any harm, she was happy when Rose Palmieri said she’d heard he was still sick with the Spanish Influenza.
    On Friday morning, after Vincenzo waddled out of the house, after she’d fed all the children and sent them off, Josephine took a bath in the big silver tub. She put lavender in the water, and rubbed aloe from the plant she kept by the stove to treat burns on her feet and elbows. Then she put on a dress, one of the ones that made men look at her when she wore it. And she swept her hair up with a sparkling pin.
    Then, Josephine Rimaldi sat and waited. Just when she decided he wasn’t going to come, he appeared. He walked right into the house, and said her name, so soft and tender that tears spilled from her eyes. He reached for her, and she nodded.
    Tommy Petrocelli kneeled in front of her. He slowly lifted her dress and ran his large, cool hands up her thighs, as if he knew this was the very place where jolts of electricity shot through her. When his hand touched her down there and found her wet, Josephine was embarrassed. But then Tommy did the most remarkable thing. He kissed her down there. He licked her and sucked her and she heard someone moaning, loud. That feeling she’d had so long ago in the tub was back again. But at the point she had stopped, guilty and ashamed, Tommy kept going. The noise grew louder. Such moaning! Josephine was gripping Tommy’s head now, shoving herself into him, and she realized she was making all the noise. But she couldn’t stop herself. He was doing something to her, something she had been longing for. And when she found it, she knew. Her scream was like the cats in heat, but longer and more intense.
    As soon as it ended, Tommy pulled down his pants and lifted her onto the table, where he entered her. She was still trembling, wondering what had happened to her, when she realized he was not moving. He was inside her, and he was looking at her.
    â€œDo you believe it?” he whispered.
    She knew what he meant: soul mates. Her voice seemed to have vanished, but she managed to nod. Tommy Petrocelli was her soul mate. They were—incredibly, wonderfully—in love. So many questions bubbled up in Josephine’s throat that a strange, choking sound came from her. Would he take her and all these children with him somewhere?
    He took the pin from her hair, and he began to kiss her. Without those fast thrusts, Josephine was able to actually feel Tommy inside her. Soon she was clawing at him, begging him to move inside her. He moved so slowly that she thought she might die from the pleasure of it. And again those jolts were shooting through her, and she heard herself moaning, and she was digging her nails into his hard shoulders. Soon he was moving faster and grunting, and then she actually felt him come inside her.
    â€œFeel my