Most Precious Blood

by Vince Sgambati

Angie was right, but Lenny had taken umbrage at her comment about the store being his life. He tried to backtrack. “Yes, you’ve been great. I couldn’t have raised Frankie with out Mama and you. I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I had done it alone. I’m sorry.”

  The hissing radiators filled the silence, and Lenny wondered if Angie not remarrying had to do with Frankie and him. If not for them, might she have tried harder to make it work with someone? Lenny wasn’t the only one who had made sacrifices.

  “It’s strange without Mama here,” Angie said. “All day I’ve been hearing her skirt rustle in the kitchen, hearing her fuss over the twins or respond to comments that were made, and even smelling her Jean Nate. I should have made pizza di scarola, but it takes so much time and patience. I don’t have Mama’s patience. I don’t know how she did what she did after Papa died.” Angie brought her fingertips to her eyes. “Maybe the thought of selling the store feels like another loss — at least right now.”

  Lenny leaned forward and held Angie’s hand, but there was no retreating from what he had already said or what he was about to say. “I’ve also been thinking about Vi. Thinking about contacting her.”

  “Now I know you’re overreacting.” Angie pulled her hand away and sat erect.

  “You know I don’t make rash decisions,” Lenny said

  “Not usually. Though where Vi is concerned ...”

  “Where Vi is concerned ... what? Did I chase after her, or even try to contact her when she first left? Angie, I have one goal and that’s to do anything I must to make sure that Frankie doesn’t make the mistake of staying here. He’ll regret it for the rest of his life.”

  Angie stiffened, as if she had been splashed with ice water. “You mean like his father?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Lenny took a deep breath, licked his fingertips and extinguished the candles before they burned into the holders. Smoke rose above Mr. and Mrs. Claus. “Life happened, and I accepted it. I’m not crying about that, and I’m not crying about having had to raise Frankie, but I’ll burn the store down before I watch Frankie live my life.”

  Angie stood and gathered the demitasse cups and spoons. She paused before leaving the table. ”What do you want me to do?” The cups rattled on their saucers.

  “Just support me when I talk to the others about selling.” Lenny leaned back in his chair so his voice would follow Angie into the kitchen. “The Pulumbo brothers have been after me to sell the store and house to them for about a year now. You might not know them. They moved here from the old country about three years ago. Nice guys. They want to do more cooked food — you know, for takeout.”

  Angie returned to the dining room and nodded. She had the expression of a disapproving teacher. “And Vi?” Angie asked.

  “What about Vi?”

  “How can I help there?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. You know this is right for Frankie. Even Gennaro knows I’m right. I heard him tell Frankie that in a year or two Frankie would regret it if he didn’t go away to college, that he’d wind up hating Gennaro and me if he stayed here. You didn’t come back, Angie. Even after your divorce. Mama thought you should come home, but I told her to leave you alone. I was glad when you bought your own house.”

  Angie’s jaw went tense and her chest rose as she sucked in a deep breath. “I have one question. Then I’ll shut up and support whatever you want to do about the store, the house, and Vi.”

  “Okay, shoot,” Lenny said.

  “Do you regret that you didn’t follow her to California?”

  Lenny tried to hide his irritation, but he was tired of Angie making this about him or her or the past. “Come on, Angie. How could I have done that?”

  “That’s not what I asked you, but I think you answered my question anyway.”

  Angie placed the cups, saucers, and spoons in the dishwasher. After she went up to bed, Lenny sat in the shadowy living room staring at the lights on the Christmas tree. He hadn’t been completely honest with Angie about Vi. He hadn’t mentioned the emails or that she was in New York, but he didn’t want to talk about Vi at length with Angie. He had long learned not to discuss Vi with his family, especially Filomena or his sisters, who always made it sound as if, when it came to Vi, Lenny thought with his dick. But so what if he did? Did he regret not following her to California? Lately he was plagued with regrets. Not following Vi was only one in a long list.

  He put his feet up on the ottoman and drifted in and out of sleep until he woke to the shrill of someone leaning on the doorbell and a pounding in his chest.

  20

  Clear lights twinkled through white, iridescent, plastic pine needles and reflected in the folds of plastic slipcovers on white recliners where Big Vinny and Marie DiCico sat. Before them was an immense flatscreen television. Big Vinny snored while Ebenezer Scrooge trembled in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. “I fear you more than any specter I have seen,” a colorized Alastair Sim stammered. Gennaro tore the wrapping from his gift.

  “Shh!” Marie hissed. She tapped the platinum band of her engagement ring against a glass of Pepsi with ice and fiddled with the ring, pressing her thumb against its four-carat diamond.

  “How does the sound of this paper annoy you when you’re sitting next to a human chainsaw?” Gennaro said.

  “I’m used to Big Vinny’s snoring. Now quiet! I want to watch this.”

  “For the ten-millionth time,” Gennaro whispered to Frankie. “Great sweater, Francesco.”

  Gennaro had already given Frankie his gift last night on Christmas Eve. After Lenny and Angie had gone upstairs, Gennaro pounced on Frankie and whispered: “I didn’t give you your gift yet.” But Frankie pushed him away, and pointed towards the ceiling — sign language for you’re going to wake up my father and aunt.

  Unfazed, Gennaro flew off the couch, bunched up fistfuls of his baggy sweatshirt, and gyrated his hips. His red reindeer boxers showed above his sagging jeans and his washboard stomach above his boxers. A line of hair beginning at his navel disappeared under a reindeer’s antler.

  “Very cute,” Frankie said.

  “I really did get you something.” Gennaro sat on the ottoman in front of Frankie, grinning as he slipped a small box, wrapped in gold foil paper, from his hip pocket onto Frankie’s knee. The glow of the Christmas-tree lights formed a halo around Gennaro’s silhouette.

  “It’s not going to open itself, Francesco.”

  Frankie unwrapped the gift and lifted the cover off the box. In the dimly lit room, all he could make out was a small gold medal at the end of a chain.

  “Bring it closer to the tree lights,” Gennaro said.

  Like toddlers waiting for Christmas magic to appear, they pressed close to each other. Frankie inhaled the sent of balsam and Gennaro.

  “It’s a medal of Saint Francis. I know how you’re into all this religious stuff. I mean, I don’t know a bunch about the guy except that he was kind and loving and, of course, Italian.” Gennaro laughed. “Maybe he was a lot like you. And since you have the same name as him ...”

  Under the lights, the gold medal and chain were luminous, and the impression of Saint Francis reflected in a shiny ornament — elongated and indigo as if painted by El Greco. Frankie kissed Gennaro. “I know I must be crazy, but I love you.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “I don’t want to leave you. My father wants me to go away to college, but I don’t want to.”

  Gennaro pressed his fingertips against Frankie’s lips.

  “Don’t make me your excuse, Francesco.” Gennaro moved away from him. “Your old man is right. You need to get out of here and go away to college. You don’t belong here. And if you stay, I give it a year or two before you’ll regret it, before you hate your old man and before you hate me.” Gennaro inched his way onto the couch. “Plus, remember, I’m joining the Army, maybe the Marines. We both need to get away from 104th Street. Maybe for different reasons, but we both need to go.”r />
  Frankie slipped on the Saint Francis medal, let the matter drop, and joined Gennaro on the couch. It was too beautiful a moment to ruin with an argument. They lay together — fitting like two spoons, and they talked about little things and even laughed.

  “This is gonna sound corny,” Gennaro said, “but when you stay at my house, my favorite time is when we lie like this and we’re just about to fall asleep. It’s as if, except for us, the whole fucking world disappears.”

  “Wish we could sleep together every night,” Frankie said.

  Gennaro changed the subject. They talked about Angie’s linguini with calamari and Lenny’s baccalà salad. “Not like my Grandma’s, but pretty good.” Frankie said.

  They talked about Johnny Pickle having a crush on Lena and how she barely talked to him, and about other friends, and about music, but they didn’t talk about Gennaro’s brothers, or jail, or the cab driver or anything sad. They hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and later, when Frankie woke in the dark, he realized that someone had unplugged the tree lights — probably Lenny.

  Now watching Gennaro’s muscles flex as he pulled on his new sweater and how its royal blue color brought out the magic in Gennaro’s eyes, Frankie thought of waking last night and wondered what Lenny had thought about finding them curled up on the couch — not that Frankie was concerned; he just wondered. He thought: How could Dad not know how much I love Gennaro? How could anyone not know?

  “The sweater fits great, Francesco,” Gennaro said. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of Scrooge and this creepy ghost.”

  Outside, elderly neighbors called goodnight from front stoops to their children and grandchildren; car engines revved and children laughed as they threw snowballs; their parents yelled for them to hurry up and get in the car. Voices and sounds were muffled by the falling snow, which crushed beneath the boys’ sneakers as they shuffled up 104th Street.

  They turned left onto 91st Avenue, past Lasante’s, and onto where storefronts reflected the change in the neighborhood’s ethnic tapestry. When Lenny was a boy, there were Italian grocery stores and fruit stands; German butchers and bakeries; Eastern-European Jewish candy stores, clothing stores, and jewelers; as well as Chinese drycleaners. Of course there were exceptions, but this was enough of the rule to create the perception of businesses mapping out ethnic turf. Now, though the stores on either side of 91st Avenue, between 101st and 105th Streets were Italian-owned, beyond 105th Street was an entrepreneurial mix of the more recent immigrant influx to the neighborhood: Korean fruit stands, Guyanese bakeries, Puerto Rican restaurants, and East Indian convenience stores, but Glenhaven was still a neighborhood of immigrants with an ethic for hard work and a commitment to extended family. As in Leonardo and Lucia’s time, siblings purchased a business or piece of property together. The difference now was that the surnames on deeds had changed from names like Marconi or Cohen to Taneja or Menendez.

  They bought hot chocolates in a convenience store — the only store they found opened so late on Christmas night. A man whose complexion was the color of their drinks and who was wearing a burgundy turban wished them a Merry Christmas and counted out their change. As they left the store, Frankie noticed a kid who was checking out the display of chips, but also eying Gennaro.

  “Do you know that guy?” Frankie whispered.

  Gennaro shrugged. “I know a lot of guys.”

  The full moon illuminated their blue-gray footprints, which trailed after them in the fresh fallen snow. Frankie looked back several times and tried to shake the eerie feeling he had from seeing that boy stare at Gennaro. “I don’t like the way that kid looked. Something wasn’t right. When he saw that I noticed him staring at you, he looked away, but his brow was all crunched up as if he were struggling to figure something out,” Frankie said.

  Gennaro asked if Frankie wanted him to go back and knock the guy out. Frankie laughed, but continued to glance back over his shoulder every now and then.

  They sipped their hot chocolates, and their warm breath mixed with the steam from their drinks. They talked about driving to Tucci’s place. Neither of them had ever been there in winter. They also spoke of driving to the Carolinas or Florida. It was over a week before school would start again, and Frankie recalled his conversation with Lenny about not going back for the spring semester since he already had all the credits he needed to graduate. He had a fleeting thought of Gennaro and him walking the beaches near Taormina.

  “The world is bigger than 104th Street,” Gennaro said, sounding very much like Lenny.

  Frankie was about to suggest that they take an extended trip when a rat scurried out from under a snow sculpture of torn trash bags, and Gennaro shuddered and spilled chocolate on his jacket. “Shit, I hate those fucking things,” he said.

  Frankie laughed, and reminded Gennaro of another time that a rat had startled him. They were waiting for a subway at the Canal Street Station on their way home from the San Gennaro Feast in Little Italy. A rat darted across Gennaro’s brand-new and very expensive sneakers. “Remember, you threw up, kicked off your sneakers without touching them, and left them on the train platform.” By now, Frankie was laughing so hard that tears froze on his cheeks, and he forgot about Taormina and traveling. “You rode the train home without shoes. Remember?”

  “Very funny. Probably some homeless guy got a free pair of sneakers. I was just being charitable.”

  “Yeah, you’re a regular Good Samaritan.”

  “Don’t Tootsie live around here?” Gennaro asked.

  Frankie glanced up at the street sign. “Wow, I guess we’ve walked pretty far.”

  “Maybe we should stop in for a visit.”

  “It’s too late. Besides, I don’t know her address.”

  “She’s probably tired anyway, after giving birth to Baby Jesus.”

  “Boy, you’re full of it tonight,” Frankie said.

  Gennaro’s cellphone rang. “Yep, be there in about 20 or 30 minutes, maybe less.” He turned to Frankie. “I have one last Christmas gift for you. Come on. I’ll race you.”

  Be where? Frankie thought as they gulped what was left of their lukewarm chocolate, wedged the empty cups into a full trashcan, and jogged several blocks until they had to stop and catch their breaths, belching chocolate steam into the icy night. They resumed jogging but with more frequent breaks. They approached Most Precious Blood.

  “Let’s turn in here, I have something to show you,” Gennaro said, panting.

  Frankie was puzzled, but followed Gennaro into the parking lot and down the concrete steps, curving below the Basilica’s stone foundation. As kids they scared each other with stories about the gargoyles that lived beneath the church — more like Gennaro scared Frankie.

  “What are we doing here?” Frankie whispered, as if being within the bowels of the church warranted hushed voices.

  “You’ll see.” Gennaro pressed the latch on a heavy wooden door. It opened. “Hey, Mr. Rodriguez! You in there?”

  “Merry Christmas, Gennaro. Sorry to call you, but I didn’t know if you were still coming.” Rodriguez was the main custodian for Most Precious Blood. His hands were large and gnarled. Like the statue of Mary on the Lasante grave, two fingers on his left hand were missing. His breath smelled of cigars and whiskey.

  “I kind a lost track of time,” Gennaro said. “This is my friend Frankie Lasante.”

  Mr. Rodriguez extended his right hand. “I see you in church a lot, no?”

  Before Frankie could speak, Gennaro answered for him. “Yeah, that’s why I thought he’d like some quiet time in church. He’s kind of a saint. You know how saints get all holy around Christmas.”

  Rodriguez eyed Frankie and made the sign of the cross. “Go ahead upstairs. I left small lights on, but don’t turn on no big lights. I still got about an hour’s work to do, so take your time.” He smiled at Frankie. “Maybe you can say a prayer for my Isabel? Her arthritis has been bad lately. Too much cold weather.”

  “Sure, he loves prayin
g,” Gennaro said. “Sometimes I can’t get him up off his knees.”

  Gennaro pushed Frankie towards the stairs to the Sanctuary. Rodriguez lit the stub of cigar hanging from the downturned corner of his mouth and picked up a broom.

  “Your saint stuff was real funny. And the part about me being on my knees ...” Frankie grumbled as he felt his way up the dark steps, and Gennaro felt his way between Frankie’s legs.

  “Cut it out.” Frankie pushed Gennaro’s hand away. “I can’t believe that man has to clean a church on Christmas night.”

  “Yeah. Remember the bumper sticker we saw: Catholic School Teacher. The Pay Is Lousy, But The Tips Are Out of This World. I guess things are even worse for custodians. My grandfather would have started a union, but the Pope would have expelled him.”

  “You’re a riot. What are we doing here anyway?”

  “I want to show you something. Remember I said that I had another present for you?”

  “How did you get him to let us in here?”

  “Hey, I’m still a DiCico, ain’t I? For better or worse. Now stop with all the questions and keep walking.”

  They walked past what was once the main altar — before Vatican II and before priests faced their congregation to say Mass — down marble steps to what Filomena had called the stage. At the center of the stage was the main altar, not as grand as its predecessor. It was made of wood instead of marble, and the sides and legs of the altar showed an in-progress relief of hand-carved lilies, mixed with penciled outlines — templates for future carvings. The unfinished carvings gave the altar a this-too-will-pass appearance despite sitting in the middle of the church for more than 30 years. Filomena complained that after Vatican II priests went to acting school instead of the seminary. One of her many complaints about change in the Church, even though she never missed Mass. Not that she listened to the priests. She was too busy praying the rosary.

  Frankie glanced around the immense stone cave of shadows and squinted towards the smaller grottos, which brought to mind the images on the cartoline postale. Flickering jelly jars, several wall sconces, and a small spotlight shining on the nativity scene to their left were the only lights lit in the church. There was the faint sent of balsam and frankincense.