Tony's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  Saverio went to the railing of the loft and took a solo with O Holy Night. He poured his pain into the hymn, knowing that there was no other place for it on Christmas Eve. Music had always been a respite for him. Singing comforted him; it was a way to release emotions he held, and feelings he needed to express. When he hit the notes in the bridge of the song, his voice released in a fuller tone, more powerful and assured than the parishioners had heard before. He held the note a cappella as the organist poised her fingers above the keys of the organ, and waited for him to breathe. When he did, he sang the final phrasing as she gently pressed the keys. The lyric divine hung over the congregation like a lace canopy as Saverio held the note.

  After he finished, the organist lifted her feet off the pedals and her hands off the keys. There was silence followed by a restlessness in the congregation.

  Constance leaned forward as Saverio returned to his seat on the bench with the choir. “They want to applaud,” she whispered. “In church.” Her hot breath made his neck itch, but he nodded in gratitude.

  Saverio barely felt the congratulatory pats on the back from his fellow choir members. His mind was elsewhere. He had hit the high note deftly, as though he had snatched it out of midair like a butterfly and held it tenderly by its fragile vibrato wings as it fluttered. He sang in hopes of getting Cheryl’s attention and winning her with his technique. But she hadn’t been listening, it seemed. Her focus was elsewhere, on the congregation below, on her fiancé in the Chesterfield coat.

  * * *

  There was one orange left in the paper sack at the end of midnight mass. Saverio remained in the choir loft alone, peeled the orange, dropped the shards of skin into the open paper bag as he watched Cheryl and Ricky (who would soon be driving a Packard) light candles and genuflect at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the alcove beside the main altar before they turned, arm in arm, walked down the center aisle, out of the church and out of his life.

  With his feet propped on the organ bench, Saverio leaned back in his seat and ate the sections of the sweet orange one by one as the last of the congregation emptied out into the cold night. He planned to hide until the church was empty.

  “Hey, are you Saverio?” A man around thirty with a mustache, wearing a navy wool dress coat, stood at the top of the choir-loft steps. “Don’t let me interrupt you and that tasty orange, brother.”

  Saverio swallowed. “Brother?”

  “Just an expression. You’re the kid who sang?” The man spun his hat on his fist with his free hand.

  “Yes.”

  “The solo. You blasted the C?”

  “That was me.” Saverio blushed.

  “You can sing, my friend. I’m Sammy Prezza. I play sax with the Rod Roccaraso Orchestra. You heard of him?”

  Saverio sat up on the bench. “I’ve heard him on the radio.”

  “Pretty good, right?”

  “I like him fine.”

  “Well, our singer fell out, and Rod is looking for a new sound. I think he’d like you. There’s a little quartet he uses that’s all right, but the plum is the singing gig. Fronting the band. I wouldn’t set my heart on that, but the quartet is always on the spin. Here.” Sammy handed his card to Saverio. “We’re playing East Lansing on New Year’s Eve. This card will get you in. And I’ll get you to Rod.”

  “And then what?”

  “Sing for Rod and see where it goes.”

  “Thanks.” Saverio looked at the card with a gold embossed treble clef and black letters. It looked swell.

  “How old are you?” Sammy asked.

  “How old do I look?” Saverio shot back.

  “Good answer.” Sammy turned back before going down the steps. “No kidding, you got pipes.”

  * * *

  Rosaria Armandonada laced her arm through her son’s as they walked home from midnight mass. “You sang so beautifully,” she marveled. “The people were crying. I was crying.”

  “I don’t want to make people cry when I sing, Ma.”

  “No, no, that’s good. They’re feeling something.” She squeezed his hand.

  “I want to make them happy.”

  “You do. Even when they’re weeping.”

  “How can somebody be happy when they’re crying?”

  “They think about their memories. What they miss, who they miss. That’s better than all the silly music on the radio.”

  “Not better. Just different.”

  As they turned the corner onto Boatwright, the scent of roasted chestnuts wafted through the air. They looked at one another. Saverio grinned. “Pop.”

  Leone stood in the front yard of their house, roasting chestnuts in a heavy iron skillet over a fire he had made in a small pit in the frozen ground.

  “Leone, you should’ve heard your son sing in church tonight.”

  “I heard him sing plenty.”

  “Tonight, though, he sounded like an angel. He had power. It was pure.”

  “I guess I made some folks cry.”

  “I can make them cry when I sing too,” Leone joked as he gave his wife a copper bowl filled with hot chestnuts, their black shells split open, spitting fragrant steam into the cold air.

  “I’ll make a syrup and dress them.” Rosaria went inside as Saverio helped his father put out the fire.

  Leone used a trowel to throw ash over the flames. Saverio knelt down and made a mound of snow into a large ball. He handed it to his father, who placed it on the ash. Soon the flames sputtered to curls of gray smoke.

  “Pop, a man came up to me after mass.”

  “For what?”

  “Wants me to audition for a band.”

  “To do what?”

  “To sing. I’ll play a little mandolin, maybe.” Saverio knew the mandolin held a special place in his father’s heart. He’d played the instrument himself when he was a boy in Italy, and had taught his son how to play.

  Leone was unmoved. “You’re a bolter at Rouge.”

  “I know. But I could sing at night. Make a little extra money maybe.”

  “You can’t do both.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t. That life is no life for you.”

  “Those guys do really well. They make money entertaining people. If I got good, I bet I could double my salary.”

  “It’s a crazy scheme. Don’t fall for it.”

  Saverio followed his father into the house. “It’s all for real. They want to pay me.”

  “They tell you they pay you, you go on the road, they no pay you. I hear stories of show business. It’s for gypsies. You work, the boss keeps all the money. You starve. He gets fat and he gets showgirls and you get nothing.”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Because a man from the Rod Roccaraso Orchestra was at mass. He made it his business to talk to me. He sought me out. He said I had talent. He said I could make it in the music business.”

  Saverio followed his father into the kitchen. Rosaria stirred the syrup on the stove. She turned off the burner and ladled the hot syrup over the meat of the shelled chestnuts.

  “His business is not your business. We don’t know this man. Who is he anyway? What does he really want with you?” Leone raised his voice.

  “Leone, just listen to him.”

  “Shuddup, Rosaria.”

  She turned back to the stove and stirred the large pot of marinara sauce simmering on a burner.

  “Don’t talk to her that way,” Saverio said quietly.

  Leone banged the table. The son had tripped the switch of his father’s rage, and he immediately regretted it.

  “You mind your own business.” Leone hit the table again. “This is my house.”

  “It’s all yours, Papa. But you don’t have to tell Mama to shut up. This argument is between you and me.”

  “It’s fine,” Rosaria insisted.

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” the boy said wearily, knowing that his father spoiled for a fight,
no matter the occasion.

  “You lose your job at Rouge, that’s it. They never take you back.” Leone raised his voice. “Men come from Missouri, Kentucky, Chicago—from every country with their sons, and some have many, many sons to work at Rouge. They take any job. Cyanide foundry, they don’t care. Any job. You have a good job on the line, and you no want it. Only a stupid boy gives up a good position on the line.”

  “I have other things I want to do. Maybe try something else. I don’t know.”

  “Life is not what you want to do. It’s what you have to do.”

  “Why can’t it be both?”

  “It can,” Rosaria said.

  “I told you to stay out of it,” Leone warned his wife before turning to his son. “You know what I had to do to get you a job at the plant? They have lists of names. I told them you would be good, better than me.”

  “But I’m not you.”

  “You have everything easy. You are a mama’s boy.”

  “Okay, Pop.” Saverio surrendered. His father was furious, and whenever it got to this point, it would be bad for the son and worse for his mother.

  “Saverio has a talent! I want to see him use it,” Rosaria said quietly.

  “How do you know talent?”

  “I know my son.”

  “You know nothing!” Leone thundered. He stood abruptly, flipping the straight-backed chair onto the floor, where it made a cracking sound, and shattered.

  Rosaria and Saverio rushed to pick up the pieces. They cleaned up the rungs and back of the chair efficiently; this wasn’t the first time something had been ruined by Leone. Rosaria left the kitchen. She carried the broken wood in her arms like kindling.

  Saverio stood quietly by the sink as his father poured himself a drink at the kitchen table. It was this way every holiday, and lots of Sundays. Leone’s temper would flare over nothing, and soon he would be in a rage, his mother would leave, and the house would be silent but never serene.

  The scent of the gravy bubbling on the stove became pungent: the garlic, tomatoes, and basil were cooked thoroughly. Saverio turned off the burner, picked up the moppeens, lifted the pot of sauce off the burner, and placed it off to the side while his father lit a cigarette. Saverio stirred the sauce slowly. He thought about how best to talk to his father. “Ma got her hair done.”

  “So?”

  “You didn’t notice.”

  “So what?”

  “When a woman does her hair, it’s not for her, it’s for you. She looks nice. You should tell her. She’d like that.”

  Leone puffed on his cigarette. “Never tell your father what to do.”

  “I’m making a suggestion.”

  “You no suggest.”

  “Okay.”

  “You watch the way you talk to me.”

  “Okay, I will. If you’ll talk nicer to Ma.”

  Leone waved his son off with his cigarette. “I don’t make bargains with my son.”

  “I’m not always going to be here to talk to her. You and Ma will be alone someday, and you’ll have to converse. Talk to her nice. Like I do. Like Mrs. Farino does at the market. Like Mrs. Ruggiero does at the butcher’s. Like Father Impeciato does at church.”

  “The priest always talks nice. He wants the soldi.” Leone rubbed his fingers together, indicating the collection plate.

  “Everybody in the world isn’t after your money.”

  “That’s what you think. And they after yours too.”

  “I’m going to leave here someday.”

  Leone laughed. “And go where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And do what?”

  “I’m not sure,” Saverio lied. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but he thought it wise to keep it to himself.

  “You waste your life.”

  “That’s the thing about a life, Pop. You get one. You can work at the Rouge plant and save every penny and buy your girl a gold chain and the night you’re going to give it to her, you find out she’s gonna marry somebody else. So all those hours on the line, when you thought you were working for your dreams, to make a life with a pretty girl you’re nuts for, you weren’t, you were busting your ass for nothing but the sheer joy of locking a wrench on a bolt for Henry Ford.”

  “You got paid good money.”

  “Money’s only worth something if you can spend it to make somebody else happy. That’s what the peddler said, and I think he was right.”

  “A gypsy. You listen to a gypsy?”

  “He seems pretty smart to me.”

  “Use your head. You need to eat. You have to buy food with something. What you don’t grow in your garden, you have to buy.”

  “Necessities. I calculated them too. The freight on them only amounts to a couple of hours a day on the line in a week in the life of a man. What to do with the other eight? Where do those wages go? How are they spent?”

  “The government.”

  “Some. And the rest?”

  “You save it. Under your mattress. Never the bank. Because you don’t know what’s coming.”

  “I don’t care about that. I wanted to see my paydays in gold around Cheryl Dombroski’s perfect neck.”

  “She don’t want you.”

  “No, she don’t.” Saverio was pained to admit it aloud.

  “To hell with her then.”

  “Fair enough. If she loved me, I would have given her everything I had.”

  “You have the eyes of a fish for her.” His father smiled.

  “If I had a girl, I’d treat her good. That’s why I give you hell, Pop. You got a girl. You should treat her good.”

  “You don’t know nothing.”

  “I know a few things. I know when you love a girl and you don’t show her, it’s a sin.”

  “Agh.” Leone waved his hand at his son to dismiss him.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are. Someday you will figure it out, and it will be too late.”

  Saverio left his father alone in the kitchen. On his way upstairs, he saw his mother in the living room, sitting by the radio. She was now forty, and there was barely any white in her black hair. She still had a fine figure and the face of a Venetian, with a strong nose and lovely brown eyes.

  Rosaria had made the modest home as lovely as she could. The walls were painted a cheery yellow. The gray linoleum floor was waxed to a polished finish. She had sewn muslin curtains that, while plain, had a little flair, with ruffles gathered along their hems. The family Christmas tree was decorated with ornaments she had made herself, star-shaped spiderwebs of lace that hung from the branches artfully. Saverio noticed how hard his mother tried to bring some beauty into their lives.

  “You okay, Ma?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She waved her son off as her husband had.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t fix the chair,” she said. “I don’t think ten men could fix that chair. The wood is bad. It’ll make good kindling.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “Save your money.”

  “I have, Ma. It’s upstairs under the mattress. When I finally spent some money on something pretty, it didn’t turn out so good.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Saverio smiled. “Maybe next time.”

  “I like the tree.” Rosaria looked it up and down. “I’ll be sad when Epiphany comes and I have to take it down.”

  “You did a nice job.”

  “Thank you, Sav.”

  “Did you buy me a hat?” Saverio picked up a large round box wrapped in brown paper from under the tree.

  “You peeked!”

  “Nope. It’s the shape of the box.”

  “I didn’t know how to wrap it.”

  “It’s fine, Ma.”

  “I hope you like it.”

  “I need a hat.”

  “I know you do.” She lowered her voice. “You can’t go around in a wool cap and impress the bandleaders. I want you to audition for that orchestra.”

  “I
’d like to, Ma.”

  “When you sing, you mean it.”

  “I believe the words,” he admitted.

  “That’s what moves people.”

  Saverio sat down next to his mother. “Like Sleep in heavenly peace.”

  Rosaria put her arms around her son. “Written by someone who held a baby.”

  Saverio tried to pull away, but his mother tightened her embrace. “You’ll always be my baby.”

  “Ma.” He was embarrassed.

  “I raised a good son. An artist. I want you to be one. You used to write poems. You could write songs, you know. Songs like that.”

  “I could try, I guess.”

  “You have to—you have to use your talent. It’s a sin not to.”

  “I like singing in church.”

  “When the Peparetti family butchers the hog, Mrs. Peparetti always brings me a pork shoulder. And I like to make it in the pot with gravy. One year, she brought me the meat and it wouldn’t fit in the pot. The bone was too big, too much for my old pot. There was no way to cook it. So I had to bring it back to her, or it would’ve been wasted. That’s how I feel about you. You’ve outgrown the pot. The choir at Holy Family isn’t enough for you. The festival in the summer in Dearborn, it’s for amateurs. You need bigger, better, more.”

  “How will I know if I can do it?”

  “That’s the easy part. The people will let you know if they like you. And if they don’t like you, you can always get a job back on the line.”

  “Have you talked to Pop about this?”

  “No. It would hurt him. He doesn’t see art, and he doesn’t hear music. He’s a responsible man.”

  “That’s what you call him?”

  “He’s your father,” Rosaria reminded him, though she didn’t have to. Leone was the sun in their little solar system; there wasn’t room for much more than them. “Papa is practical.”

  “Practical men don’t dream.”

  “They do. But they’re different dreams. His dream is to hold on to his job week after week, year after year. To get a raise once in a while. To have enough to pay the rent. To buy a coat when he needs it—or you do, or I do. His dreams are to provide the necessities of life. He grew up so poor, to him, food, clothing, and shelter, even at their minimum, are luxuries.”

  “So are children.”