“Still don’t talk much,” she said. “But he gets speech therapy in school, not that he don’t know how to talk. He just don’t want to. I don’t think they know what to do with him, so they give him speech therapy. I don’t blame them. I don’t know what to do with him either. I figure, when he wants to talk he will. Kind of like that book I read in high school by that black poet. You know the one about a bird singing in a cage. Maya Angelou, that was her name. Remember she wrote a poem when Clinton was inaugurated? Oh, you don’t remember that. You were a little kid. Anyway, she had stopped talking for a long time when she was a little girl, after she was raped. When she was ready, she started talking again. Sometimes folks just do things in their own time.”
Frankie recalled Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her poem Morning. Lenny recited it along with other poems when Frankie was in elementary school. But Frankie wondered what Angelou’s book and the reason she didn’t speak for awhile had to do with Tyrone.
“They’re saying that he has Asperger’s,” Tootsie said chuckling. “Leave it to teachers and psychologists to come up with a name like that.”
Tootsie explained that Tyrone was given a slew of tests and that she had to attend too many school meetings where everyone talked to her like she was an idiot. “Whatever,” she said. “They wrote down Asperger’s, and he’s in what they call an inclusion classroom with a teacher and two aides. One of the aides is this pretty little thing, and Tyrone loves to brush her hair. If nothing else, he’s learning to be a beautician. That’s more than I ever got out of school.”
Despite the name, Frankie was more comfortable with the Asperger’s diagnosis than the Angelou comparison. “Sooo, you said Tyrone has a little sister,” Frankie said.
“No, Honey. I said the baby was a girl.”
Frankie sat back and looked as if his orange juice went down the wrong pipe, and Tootsie finally sighed and said, “Okay, honey, guess you’re not gonna let up, so here goes ... I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, but it’s like for some reason I trust you. In fact, it was seeing you hold Tyrone in church that time when we first met that helped me make up my mind. Ya know like sometimes you’re just supposed to meet someone. I’ve been telling people that the baby is living with my cousin in Jersey, but that’s only half true. She lives in Jersey, but with her parents.”
“You mean with her father?”
“Hell no. Not that jackass. I mean with her parents. She was adopted.”
“Frittata, Italian toast, and an extra plate.” The waitress just about dropped the plates on the table, but Frankie welcomed the distraction, as it gave him time to absorb what Tootsie had said.
“It feels good to tell someone aside from my mother, who just cries and says her rosary. Anyway, she’s a lucky little girl. I got to meet her daddies, and ...”
“Daddies?” Frankie interrupted.
“Yeah these gay guys adopted her.”
Now Frankie’s orange juice really did go down the wrong pipe.
“Careful, honey. You okay?”
He nodded.
“Well like I was saying, when I saw you holding Tyrone in church, I made up my mind. Like it was a sign. Like some kind of fate. You know what I mean?”
Tootsie scraped some of her frittata onto the extra plate while Frankie sat there slack-jawed and stuck on, These gay guys adopted her, not to mention that he had also thought of him holding Tyrone as a sign. He knew exactly what Tootsie meant about their meeting being fate. Gennaro was right when he said that Tootsie and Frankie made a good pair.
“Honey, you can close your mouth. It’s not like I gave her to Martians. I knew that the baby’s father wasn’t going to hang around. And I didn’t want her to be around any other jerks that I might hookup with. I’m a magnet for bad boys ... except maybe for recently, but we’ll see how that turns out. Anyways, mostly bad boys. Tyrone’s father was the worst. He tried to come back once, but I threw his ass out of the house after he near killed Tyrone. He said that Tyrone was nothing but a little faggot and he was gonna beat the sissy out of him. Can you imagine? I swear that it was because of that beating that Tyrone stopped talking. Never mind Asperger’s. Tyrone’s father was the biggest ass burger going. And Sarah’s father ain’t much better. Those gay guys named her Sarah. Isn’t that pretty? It’s kind of biblical. Leave it to gays to come up with a pretty name. I think one of them is Jewish, but I don’t know. Maybe Arab. He’s cute whatever he is. They both are.”
Tootsie barely took a breath between chewing and swallowing and talking. “Ain’t you going to eat them eggs, honey? They’ll get cold. Nothing worse than cold eggs.”
Frankie stared at his plate. He had just learned that Tyrone’s father beat him for being a faggot and gay men had adopted Tootsie’s baby. And by the way, he thought, I’m in love with Gennaro, and I think our great-grandfathers were also lovers. I can show you their nude photos. It seemed like the thing to say, but Frankie couldn’t bring himself to do it. Oh, and my father made a drop for Big Vinny, and Gennaro may have been involved with the cabdriver’s murder. Instead of saying anything, he just looked back at Tootsie and held his chin in the palm of his hand to keep his head from spinning off his shoulders.
“Well, as I was saying, I haven’t seen Sarah’s father since I told him I was pregnant. He’s probably in jail. When I watched you holding Tyrone in church, I thought this baby is gonna grow up around decent men. And as I said the chance of me hooking up with a decent man ain’t too good. Then I went to this adoption agency and saw this photo album from these two guys looking to become daddies. They wrote a beautiful letter. It made me cry. So I thought I could finally do something good. She’ll have two daddies to love her. I told them she was meant to be their baby. The Lord just had her come into this world through my body. But she was meant for them. After all, neither one of them has a uterus and all. Believe me, I wish I could give them mine for all the trouble it gets me into. Nice guys. But you know what they say. All the good ones are either married or gay. Well I don’t know about the married part.”
“You’re okay with gay men adopting her?”
“Honey, please.” Tootsie dabbed a spot of egg at the corner of her mouth with a napkin and wiped crumbs from off the top of her sweater. “Look at me dining on the upper terrace as usual.” Tootsie chuckled. “Now what did you ask me? Oh, yeah — about gay daddies. I’ve known enough straight men that should have had their nuts cut off, starting with my own father. Them being gay is a plus as far as I’m concerned. Are you gonna eat those eggs or not?”
Frankie had enough trouble swallowing Tootsie’s story, never mind the eggs, but Tootsie devoured her breakfast as if she hadn’t eaten in days.
“By the way, speaking of the few decent straight guys, I ran into your father awhile ago. Now there’s a nice guy, and he’s still awfully cute. Did he say anything about me? I told him that I used to see you in church.”
“My father?”
“More coffee?” The waitress stood over Tootsie with a full Silex coffee pot.
“Sure, honey, just a mouth full. Yeah. I ran into Lenny getting off the train on Lefferts Blvd.”
Lefferts Blvd? Frankie thought. That’s four stops past ours. What was he doing there, and when did he have the time to take a train? Frankie remembered Big Vinny’s envelope and Lenny’s trip to Manhattan. He also recalled his email to Violetta, and though Tootsie’s lips continued to move, he couldn’t make out her words. He felt nauseated and their plates, the counter, the stools, the waitresses refilling Tootsie’s coffee cup all went fuzzy. He brought the cool glass of orange juice to his forehead and held it there until he understood Tootsie saying. “Are you okay, honey?”
Next he heard himself say: “Yes, I’m fine ... just got a little dizzy for a minute.”
“That’s funny, so was Lenny when I got off the train — dizzy I mean. Maybe it’s some kind of family thing, like you both got low blood sugar or something. Eat your eggs, it will help. So, Lenny did
n’t mention that he saw me?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Frankie took a sip of the orange juice and looked over his glass at a woman buckling a squirming baby into a high chair at the table behind Tootsie. When his vision cleared, he looked back at Tootsie and told her that his father had gone into the city that day, but that he was asleep when Lenny came home. “I never asked him about what he did,” Frankie said.
“Oh, sure, I understand.” But Tootsie seemed disappointed that Lenny hadn’t mentioned her. “Anyways,” she said, “we just said hi and he got back on the train. He must have missed his stop. You know maybe he fell asleep or something.”
It was the “or something” that concerned Frankie, but he didn’t mention anything to Tootsie about Big Vinny’s envelope.
Later that day, when Frankie came home from school, he also didn’t mention to Lenny that he had skipped his first two classes, but he did mention that he saw Tootsie at church and that she said that she had run into him at the Lefferts Blvd. Station.
Lenny tapped a roll of quarters on the edge of the counter and dropped the freed coins into the register draw. “That was the day I went into the city. On the way home, I fell asleep and missed my stop.”
“That’s what she said.”
Lenny nodded and closed the draw. He walked out from behind the counter, removed a razor from his pocket, and sliced open the top of a case of olive oil. He glanced up and met Frankie’s stare. “Any homework?” he said.
Frankie nodded, grabbed a package of cupcakes and a quart of milk. “By the way, Dad, you never mentioned what you did that night.”
“What night?”
“The night you went to Manhattan.”
Lenny pressed the razor into the top of another case of olive oil. “A lot of walking. Dinner. A late movie. Nothing special.” He positioned the last few gallon cans atop the pyramid display. “You have homework, yes?”
“It’s just that I thought ...”
“And I thought you had homework to do. If not there are cases of coffee in the warehouse that need to be shelved.”
It was clear to Frankie that Lenny was done talking about whatever happened that night. He wasn’t going to tell Frankie about the envelope or what he did with it, so Frankie finally left him to his olive oil.
As he walked through the office, Frankie glanced at the safe and wondered if he should have been more open with Tootsie. After learning about the baby’s daddies, he knew she would be fine with him being gay. In fact, she probably had surmised as much, but there was her opinion of Gennaro to consider. He’s bad news, he imagined her saying. Go find yourself a nice gay boy. Maybe Sarah’s daddies know someone they could introduce you to. Frankie shrugged his shoulders, walked through the dining room, into the kitchen, ate the cupcakes, downed the quart of milk in several gulps, tossed the empty milk container and cupcake wrapper in the trash, and headed up to his room. But Tootsie wouldn’t lecture me about Gennaro, he thought, considering all the jerks she said she hooked up with? I guess being attracted to bad boys was something else we have in common.
Once in his bedroom and sitting at his desk, he wondered what it had been like when his dad and Uncle Tony shared this room, and before that, his Grandpa Vincenzo, and Gennaro’s Grandfather? He imagined the grandfathers as teenagers discussing adolescent angsts and hopes, and Gennaro’s Grandfather Giacomo talking about Sicily, poverty, and Fascism. And Frankie’s Great-Grandma Lucia overhearing their conversation and telling them to leave all those bad memories in the Old Country where they belonged and to wash up for supper. But not all that took place in the Old Country was bad, Frankie thought. Like before my Great-Grandparents had come to America, before they had married, when Great-Grandpa Leonardo and Gennaro’s Great-Grandfather Salvatore were friends, maybe more than friends. Maybe those were good moments, even if they were never spoken of.
Frankie opened his social studies book and read about Mussolini and Hitler and World War II, but his thoughts drifted to stories he had heard about Giacomo DiCico returning to Europe as an American soldier and welcoming the opportunity to destroy Fascism once and for all. And stories of Gennaro’s Uncle Sal, the war hero killed in Vietnam, Big Vinny’s older brother. The good one. Frankie had never met either man, but they were a part of Lasante-DiCico lore. He had learned about them the way he had learned about so many others, through stories shared at the kitchen or dining room table, extended with three leaves, or at the plywood table, under Leonardo’s grape arbor. But some stories weren’t shared at tables — in kitchens or dining rooms or outside under arbors, Frankie thought. Some stories may have remained underground like the roots of Leonardo’s grape vine.
18
Angels and saints wearing snowy caps and epaulettes watched silently as Lenny and Frankie stepped from the just-plowed and salted road onto graves blanketed in feathery white. If the dead could exhale they would have sent each snowflake whirling and twirling like dandelion seeds on a breezy day. Lenny positioned an evergreen wreath before the Lasante gravestone and pressed down on its wire prongs until they pierced the frost. A red plastic ribbon across the middle of the wreath read: “Christmas in Heaven.” This was their first Christmas without Filomena, and they’d miss the aroma of Christmas cookies baking and of pizza di scarola, a mixture of escarole, olives, capers, anchovies, pignoli, walnuts, raisins, and a touch of chocolate shavings baked between two layers of pizza dough. Lenny called the meld of bitters, sweets, and salts food for the gods, and he told himself: Maybe that’s who she’ll be baking it for this Christmas Eve.
Christmas had long been difficult for Lenny — the time when childhood friends returned to the old neighborhood to visit their parents on 104th Street and made the perfunctory Lasante stop and spouted their tired accolades: You were the best of us, Lenny ... If only your father hadn’t died ... If only you didn’t have to drop out of high school ... Hard Luck ... Lenny. Christmas had long been the season of if-only.
“Buon Natale,” he whispered after securing the Christmas wreath. Frankie blew snow from the statue of Mary holding the baby Jesus atop the Lasante gravestone where chiseled letters formed the names Leonardo, Lucia, Vincenzo, Filomena under the surname Lasante, and numbers told the dates of their births and deaths, but said nothing of all that had happened in between those dates. Two fingers on Mary’s right hand, which had once pointed to heaven, were missing.
“I should have it fixed, but I kind of like her the way she is,” Lenny said. “As if she’s holding up the Black Panther’s Fist of Glory.”
Frankie didn’t respond to Lenny’s hackneyed comment about Mary’s hand. He said the same thing every time he and Frankie went to the cemetery.
Frankie nodded towards the DiCico family grave boasting a wreath at least four times the size of the one they just brought. “Big Vinny must have been here,” Frankie said.
“I guess he wants to make sure that his parents can see it from heaven.”
“I thought you don’t believe in heaven.”
“It was a joke, Frankie.”
“Why do you come here?”
“I don’t know. Tradition, maybe.”
“But I just heard you wish someone a Merry Christmas. Who were you talking to?”
“I don’t know that I was talking to anyone. At least not the way I’m talking to you.”
“Maybe it was like a prayer?” Frankie said.
“Are we having some kind of epiphany here, Frankie?”
Frankie shrugged, turned and walked away, but before he reached the car, Lenny pelted him with snowballs and Frankie quickly reciprocated. Snowballs flew as father and son bobbed up and down behind tombstones like graveyard Whac-A-Moles. Frankie yelled: “Truce! You win ... you win! Grandma would have been mad at us for disrespecting the dead.”
“My guess is a lot of these folks had some pretty good snowball fights in their day,” Lenny said.
For most of the ride home their banter was light and playful, until Frankie began texting Gennaro, and the gray d
ay turned grayer. Lenny reflected upon how the drive from the store to the cemetery, like stocking shelves or bagging groceries, just about summed up his life. Once home, the sound of steam banging in the radiators and the warmth that followed felt more stifling than comforting.
Lenny hung his jacket in the entry closet next to the carved mahogany pipe stand — a mother bear surrounded by her cubs, lifting her paws above her head and balancing the tray of hand-carved pipes. Several hinges formed a crease at the nape her neck, where her head tipped back to expose a humidor. No Lasante had ever smoked a pipe, but the bear and her cubs guarded the front door for as long as Lenny could remember. Frankie tossed his jacket on the rolled arm of the Queen Anne couch.
“I don’t think so,” Lenny said and handed Frankie a hanger for his jacket.
Their house was furnished with heavily lacquered, mostly European, ornate antiques. This wasn’t intentional, but beginning with Leonardo and Lucia, furniture was a Lasante afterthought purchased in secondhand stores or from relatives and friends who wanted to Americanize and modernize their homes. Filomena had considered refurnishing the living room or dining room or maybe the master bedroom after Angie was born and Leonardo and Lucia moved into a small apartment around the corner, but Vincenzo was adamant that every penny be saved for the children’s education. Three children later, making five, Vincenzo was even more frugal, and after his early death, leaving Filomena with the business to run and, except for Lenny, children to care for, redecorating was the furthest thing from her mind.
The elaborately carved wooden pieces were sinuous and dark, inlaid with contrasting types of wood or hand-painted scenes, while table lamps were replete with naked cherubs and floor lamps were just as elaborate. Glazed jardinières on matching stands occupied corners in the living room and dining room. Museum-like scenes or portraits with gilded frames hung from the walls, and bisque and porcelain figurines posed on the credenza, corner shelves, and end tables. A breakfront and a corner curio held crystal glasses and Havilland china with fine spidery veins just below the yellowed glaze. The furniture upholstery was intact due to Lucia then Filomena’s seasonal slipcover use. You would never think that so many children grew up in this house, but they had the yard and sidewalk and street for playing — when they weren’t working in the store. All in all, the Lasante furnishings were a collector’s paradise, but to Lenny it was a lot of oppressive old junk, and had he the energy or interest in buying new furniture, he would have called Goodwill to cart it all away.
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