Most Precious Blood

by Vince Sgambati

  A little boy pulled at Tootsie’s sleeve. At least Frankie thought it was a little boy, but he wasn’t sure.

  “What?” Tootsie yelled, and she shook her arm free. The boy’s nails were as pink as Tootsie’s. He twitched his head and shoulders and proceeded to promenade a naked Barbie doll along the marble altar railing in front of Saint Francis.

  Tootsie lowered herself onto a pew. “I swear, if this baby don’t come soon, I’m gonna need a backhoe to get around.” She glanced at the boy, who was now stuffing the doll into a marble scroll beneath the railing.

  “Tyrone, if you get Barbie’s head stuck again, I’m throwing her out.” Tootsie threw up her hands and turned to Frankie in desperation. “Honey, do me a favor and snatch him away from there before he breaks something.”

  An old nun cleaning the main altar shot Tootsie a disapproving glance while Tootsie arranged herself on the pew, and Frankie attempted to reason with Tyrone, who, if not for jamming a doll’s head into an altar railing with his hot-pink fingernails and given his curly, light brown hair, amber eyes, and a golden complexion, somewhere between the color of his hair and eyes, might have been mistaken as a model for one of the church’s painted cherubs peeking over clouds.

  Instead of liberating the doll from the railing, Frankie accidently decapitated her, causing Tyrone to wail and the nun cleaning the altar to fume. Frankie pressed his thumb against the doll’s head until the miniature blond projectile shot from the railing and landed on the tray of votive lights. He then retrieved the doll’s head, shoved it back onto her torso and lifted wailing Tyrone in one fell swoop. Holding Tyrone, who was spinning Barbie like a miniature baton in a parade, and trying to ignore the nun who was now scrubbing a chalice as if she were exorcizing demons, Frankie collapsed onto the pew next to Tootsie.

  “Yes, Gennaro and I are still friends,” Frankie said between gasps. He was a little spent from the whole doll incident.

  “Were you there when the explosion happened?”

  “Yes, it was terrible, but I guess Gennaro saw the flame catch on the stream of gasoline and threw the can before it exploded. That’s what he told his parents last night. Anyway, the doctor said that his burns aren’t too bad. He got a concussion, but his burns aren’t bad.”

  “DiCico luck,” Tootsie said. “They fall in shit and come up smelling like roses.”

  Frankie was surprised and somewhat perturbed at how boldly Tootsie spoke of the DiCicos. Lenny and Filomena often criticized Big Vinny, but neighbors never bad-mouthed them — at least not openly. Only Lasantes reserved that right — like family criticizing family. Tootsie was a stranger.

  “He did get a bad concussion though,” Frankie said, trying to garner some sympathy for Gennaro, but Tootsie was unmoved.

  “Let’s hope it knocked some sense into him,” she said.

  At first Frankie was peeved, but Tootsie was right. After all, Gennaro was squirting lighter fluid on the fire. Earlier that morning, Filomena had actually said something similar, except she also went on and on about nothing good will come of the DiCico brothers with a father like Big Vinny. Frankie almost spoke up, but Lenny gave him one of his don’t-even-think-of-contradicting-your grandmother looks.

  He told Tootsie about going to the hospital last night, but that only Big Vinny and Mrs. DiCico were allowed to see Gennaro. “I’m going back today after I help my father in the store,” he said.

  “Good for you, honey. You’re a good son and friend, and it looks like someday you’ll make a good daddy, certainly better than I am a mommy.”

  Curled up against Frankie’s chest, Tyrone cradled Barbie in his own small arms. When Frankie looked down at Tyrone, he recalled the time about 10 years earlier, when Gennaro had caught Lena and him playing with Barbie dolls. Gennaro, all of 9 years old, didn’t laugh or tease him. “Frankie, you’re getting too old to play with girls,” was all that he said before he took Frankie’s hand and led him from the yard to the driveway while poor Lena ran into the house screaming that Gennaro stole her best friend.

  “See Frankie, you hold a baseball like this,” Gennaro had said. “Next time my brothers take me to Shea Stadium, I’ll ask them if you can come with us. Do ya like the Mets?”

  Frankie didn’t know who the Mets were, but he told Gennaro that he loved them.

  Now, holding Tyrone and thinking of Gennaro, Frankie wondered if God was communicating through this little golden, pink-finger-nailed angel. What he felt for Gennaro wasn’t right or wrong or good or bad, it just was. He thought, What would Mary have said if she caught Jesus playing with dolls? Put that doll down, Jesus. You’re going to save the world, and no one will follow a sissy. Now go play slaughtering Roman soldiers with your cousins like a good messiah.

  Frankie grinned at his own thoughts and wished he could have shared them with Tootsie or, more importantly, with Gennaro. Last night he was convinced that the explosion was a punishment for his feelings, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Tootsie no longer appeared to be in a rush to get to work. Frankie wondered why she was having another baby if she didn’t think that she was a good mother, but it was none of his business. After all, they had just met. He checked the time on his cell phone and told Tootsie that he had to go. “Great meeting you,” he said.

  “You bet, honey,” she said. “Tell your father Tootsie from Panisi’s said hi! Your mom was crazy to leave him.”

  Frankie tried not to react. First she badmouthed the DiCicos, and then she spoke of his mother as if they were best friends. Even neighbors rarely mentioned Frankie’s mother. It was as if Tootsie had no filters and whatever popped into her head spilled from her mouth. Half asleep, Tyrone slid from Frankie’s lap onto the pew and caressed his mother’s stomach.

  At the hospital that afternoon, Frankie wanted to talk about this odd but funny woman he had just met, but Gennaro was in a terrible mood. He wore sunglasses to protect his eyes from the light. He had a very painful headache. Frankie was grateful to hear Gennaro’s voice, even if most of what Gennaro did was complain.

  6

  By the time Frankie was born, the area surrounding 91st Avenue and 104th Street was no longer the neighborhood of Leonardo, Vincenzo, or of Lenny’s youth. Most of Lenny’s peers had moved after graduating from high school or college. By default, those who remained became the keepers of traditions started by the old timers. One such tradition was the Feast of the Assumption, which began on the Friday before August 15 — the actual feast day — and culminated on the following Sunday with a procession, including a band and men carrying a statue of the Madonna up 104th, Street, turning left onto 91st Avenue, and then continuing the five blocks to Most Precious Blood Church.

  During the Feast, a bird’s-eye view would show an L shape of booths running the length of 104th Street and turning onto 91st Avenue in front of Lasante’s, where vendors hawked ceramic figurines; candy dishes and jewelry boxes with hand painted naked cherubs; miniature replicas of donkeys crowned with feathers and hitched to colorful carts; plaster statues of the Sacred Heart, the Madonna, Saint Francis, Saint Anthony, Saint Lucy, and the Infant of Prague decked out in a red satin dress; plastic rosary beads that glowed in the dark; holograms that morphed from portraits of President Kennedy into Pope John XXIII or Frank Sinatra into Sophia Loren. A new Italian American celebrity, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germonotta better known as Lady Gaga, had recently exploded onto the music scene, and the Feast of the Assumption acknowledged her with a hologram of Madonna (not “the”) morphing into Lady Gaga.

  Lenny was looking for Frankie — something he seemed to do a lot that summer — when he passed a booth where zeppole sizzled in a cauldron of bubbling oil while a woman called Angelina Zeppole (for 31 obvious reasons) scooped up the golden orbs of deep fried dough with a large slotted ladle, tossed them onto a wood-framed mesh tray, and then shook the zeppole with powdered sugar in a small brown paper bag. Food was delicious and plentiful, but zeppole, the size of a child’s fist, was the manna of Italian feasts. With th
e hem of her apron, Angelina Zeppole patted beads of sweat from her face, hands, and arms. Her flesh was soft and pliant like the dollops of dough that she dropped into the boiling oil.

  At past feasts, late into the night, after the crowds had dispersed and canvas booth awnings had been lowered, Angelina offered Lenny more than hot zeppole. Since Frankie’s mom had left, Lenny had had little interest or time for romance. One-nighters sufficed. No one got hurt. Angelina winked at Lenny and jiggled another bag of sugared zeppole. He laughed and felt the familiar stir in his groin.

  “Red number 5! I win!” It was Gennaro’s voice. “You pick what you want,” he said to a girl with long chestnut hair and almond shaped eyes. Lenny didn’t recognize the girl. Gennaro liked boasting that he could have anything or anyone he wanted. The girl picked a stuffed panda, and Gennaro handed her the prize, then kissed her full on the lips. Like a puppy, Frankie was heeled in Gennaro’s shadow, and Lenny’s stomach tightened. He had long surmised that Frankie was gay. Little things, like when Frankie was very young and played with Barbie Dolls with Lena. At first Lenny was glad when Gennaro intervened and Frankie appeared to be more interested in sports and playing with other boys. But by the time Frankie became a teenager, Lenny wondered if in fact he was more interested in Gennaro than baseball. However, Lenny wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know which concerned him more — that Frankie might be gay or that Frankie’s feelings for Gennaro put him at greater risk to be drawn into a DiCico calamity.

  This was the first feast since Gennaro was 12 years old that he didn’t take part in the grease-pole competition, where teams of boys and young men climbed and slid and climbed again to win the basket of prizes at the top of the pole, plus the status of super virility. Gennaro’s burns were almost healed, but Marie made him promise not to compete.

  “Frankie!” Lenny shouted above the noise. “I need your help with customers. Hurry up! Grandma’s alone in the store.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes. Helping Filomena was a ruse to get Frankie off the streets. He hoped that if he cut short the time Frankie hung out with Gennaro then there was less chance for Frankie to get into trouble. “One more year,” he’d tell Frankie over and over, “and then you’re off to college.” But a lot could happen in a year to derail a life. A lot could happen in a moment, as Lenny well knew and feared.

  They paused at Leo and Nina Napolitano’s stand, where the elderly couple sold torrone by the pound, much tastier than the prepackaged boxes of torrone Lenny sold in-store. Leo held a wedge against the huge block of nugget candy, tapped it with a hammer, and chipped off a chunk so precise that it would be within an ounce of the customer’s request. Children smacked their lips in anticipation, while adults admired Leo’s skill as if the torrone were marble and Leo might uncover a masterpiece like Michelangelo’s David or Moses.

  The Napolitanos also sold dry ceci beans, pistachios, salted peanuts, and Jordan almonds in white wax paper packets — Frankie’s favorite — the kind that a bride and groom might give as wedding favors tied with white satin ribbons in little mesh pouches and stuffed into fragile china slippers or teacups. Lenny bought a packet of the Jordan almonds and tossed it to Frankie. “Forgive me?” he said. Frankie nodded.

  The Napolitano’s booth stood at the curbside outside Lasante’s. Next to the grocery store was the Lasante house — a narrow, two-story brick building where on either side of the front stoop sedum spilled from matching, white cement flowerpots embossed with clusters of grapes, and pink and blue hydrangeas overwhelmed the postage stamp gardens. A neighbor had made the flowerpots as a gift when Leonardo and Lucia bought the house years ago. With a little whitewash each spring, they looked as good as new.

  A slip of alley, barely wide enough for small children to squeeze through during games of hide-and-seek, separated the house from Verdeschi’s Italian Restaurant where Johnny Boo Boo made the best pizza in the neighborhood. Next was Romano’s Funeral Parlor, Captain Beltrani’s old cigar store (now empty, its windows covered with yellowed newspapers), and on the corner where 91st Avenue intersected 105th Street was Panisi’s Bakery where Tootsie once worked. Every Sunday, after Masses, lines of impatient customers waited to buy fresh hard rolls and crumb cakes — two inches of crunchy butter and confectionary sugar topping a thin layer of yellow cake. The customers salted their gossip with complaints about the long line or the heat or the cold or their latest maladies, but the following Sunday, they stood in line again rehashing their gossip and complaints. On Christmas Eve and Easter morning, the line of customers extended from Panisi’s, past Lasante’s and around the corner, down 104th Street. For birthdays and other special occasions, Filomena ordered cassata from Panisi’s, a layer cake with a hint of rum. In between the layers was cannoli cream and slivers of milk chocolate.

  When Frankie and Lenny entered the store it was crowded with customers buzzing in loud, discordant Italian dialects and broken English, but Filomena handled them with the authority of a general. She stood behind the counter at the cash register, erect and square shouldered, her white hair combed into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and her hands in constant motion, directing the customers as if they were her recruits.

  Lenny slipped on his apron and stepped behind the slicing machine. “Who’s next?” he said.

  A man raised his hand. “I’ll have two pounds of . . .”

  But Filomena cut him off. “No, you won’t. Rosa was ahead of you. Then you go.”

  Frankie stepped behind the counter, next to Filomena, and bagged the groceries after Filomena rang up the prices on the register.

  Once the crowd cleared, Lenny told Filomena that Frankie and he could handle the store while she rested a little before the family arrived.

  A lone customer dumped change and several religious medals from a small purse onto the counter to pay for her two quarts of milk. “Yes, Filomena, you go inside and rest. Better your grandson helps his father. Keeps him out of trouble.”

  Filomena removed her apron and slipped the bib strap over Frankie’s head. Frankie tied the apron around his waist.

  “My Frankie’s a good boy,” Filomena said. “He knows how to stay out of trouble.”

  She kissed Frankie on the cheek as he counted the old woman’s change.

  “There’s enough there? I have to buy milk for my grandchildren. My son-in-law is too busy playing the horses to remember his children.” The customer made a spitting sound with her tongue.

  “There’s enough,” Lenny said, and winked at Frankie who nodded in return and swept the coins into his hand.

  Filomena went in the house to nap, and for the rest of the afternoon Frankie helped out with only an occasional grumble. They closed the store early, and by dusk the whole family gathered in the Lasante’s yard to make up the annual order of hero sandwiches for the vendors at the feast. They sat around a table made of heavy plywood nailed to wooden sawhorses under an arbor thick with twisting trunks and vines and clusters of grapes that took on the glow of the colored Christmas lights strung across the arbor. A red and white checked oilcloth was fixed to the plywood table top and covered with sheets of butcher paper, and drumlins of warm Italian bread framed streams of sliced cold cuts — Genoa salami, capicola, prosciutto, mortadella, and provolone — while citronella torches repelled mosquitoes.

  The aromas of the fresh bread, Italian cold cuts, and citronella — like sauce simmering on Sunday afternoons or baccalà on Christmas Eve — were pungent and familiar. The Lasante ritual commenced. Filomena sat at the head of the table while Lenny sat at the other end facing her. To Lenny’s right sat his brother, Tony, his sisters’ husbands, and his sisters Amelia and Irish. Irish was nicknamed for her small, turnedup nose. To Filomena’s right sat Lenny’s sister Angie, closest in age to Lenny, divorced, and with a penchant for politically left-leaning men. Next to her were three children. Two were Irish’s and one Amelia’s. Frankie sat between one of his cousins and Lenny. In total there were 12 family members at the table. Filomena would not have allowed 13
— bad luck, like the last supper.

  Tony and his wife, Laura, took turns chasing their twin boys around the yard — too young and antsy to sit still. Laura took the first shift.

  They all laughed, reminisced, and occasionally bickered, which Filomena immediately curbed. Years earlier, her position as hero-maker impresario had been shared with her husband, Vincenzo. He once sat where Lenny now sat. Before that, it was Leonardo and Lucia. Leonardo had been a cofounder of the annual Feast.

  Filomena and Angie slid sharp knives alongside loaves of bread, beginning at the farthest end, piercing the warm golden crust, and drawing the knives toward their breasts with the grace of first and second violinists. Sesame seeds speckled the butcher paper beneath their hands.

  “Careful, or a customer will get a little more than he paid for in his sandwich,” Lenny warned. But as usual they ignored his bawdy humor. They handed the splayed loaves to the giggling children. Each child’s responsibility was to add a cold cut or condiment. Since Frankie was the oldest, he was foreman— in charge of quality control and making sure that his younger cousins didn’t remove their plastic gloves or sneeze. The remaining adults, including those who married into this culinary assembly line, cut the plump heroes into three chunks and wrapped each chunk in wax paper.

  Watching Filomena and the other women fuss over the children made Lenny recall the times he had asked Frankie if he wanted to search for his mother. Frankie’s pat responses, which Lenny found puzzling if not worrisome, were some variation of, “Why would I do that? I have enough family. Who needs another mother? I already have Grandma and Aunt Angie.” Frankie was too content for Lenny’s liking, as if the neighborhood was all that he needed or wanted.

  Amelia corrected her husband on the way he wrapped the hero, and Irish told him not to listen to her. “Leave him alone. He’s a doctor, not a grocer.” The table went quiet until Lenny dismissed the unintended implication of his sister’s remark by telling a knock-knock joke to the children. They giggled and everyone resumed talking about baseball or movies or politics. Angie had volunteered for Hillary’s campaign until Obama won the primary. Now she supported Obama. Irish, Amelia, and their husbands were Republicans. Tony thought all politicians were bums.