Lenny stood as she entered the room. The last time they had been together had been in this hospital, but of course Frankie had no memory of that. No memory of her holding him, of the taste of her milk, or her kissing him goodbye before she handed him back to the nurse. But it was Gennaro’s arms and nipples and lips he missed. Not hers.
“Hello,” she said.
Lenny mumbled some excuse to leave them alone and brushed past Vi. She stood there, looking at Frankie, half smiling. Her eyes appeared moist, but it might have been the way the green of her iris reflected the light, the same green as Frankie’s, but there was no revelation here. Frankie already knew that they had the same color eyes. Lenny had often said so, as if to establish some connection between son and mother, and Frankie had seen the single resemblance in the picture on Lenny’s dresser and again in the picture on the computer. The discomfort in his neck and thigh where bullets had pierced, the fan of pictures across his sheets, the longing for Gennaro were much realer and more relevant to Frankie than this petite, tailored woman with short blond hair wearing an olive-colored gauze pant suit and the kind of jewelry one might find at a trendy craft show. She just happened to be his long-lost mother, and he just happened to have her eyes. Meeting her, Frankie felt neither happy nor angry, nor even sad. At that moment, she was the least of his concerns — so he told himself. But then a person can absorb only so much change.
“I’m sorry, Frankie.”
About what? he thought. This is how life will be — meaningless small talk with new and meaningless people.
“Do you remember, Gennaro?” he said. “He was about two when you left.”
“Well, yes, I think ...”
“You think?” he said. This is what will happen with new people I meet. They’ll never know how special Gennaro was. They’ll never hear his beautiful tenor voice or see the way his hair and eyes caught the light as if he had been born to shine. Like a shooting star.
Knowing that every second that passed brought him further away from Gennaro washed over Frankie like a wave, and he feared that he might sob, but didn’t want Vi to think that he was sobbing for her. He tried to stifle his thoughts of Gennaro and time passing by gathering the cartoline postale strewn across his lap, and he stacked them face down on his nightstand.
Vi spoke very slowly, as if she were contemplating every word before she said it. “That was a long time ago, Frankie ... But I remember that Marie had children. In fact, she was pregnant when, well, when I had you.
“That was Lena,” Frankie said.
“Yes, so Gennaro was a toddler then.”
“But do you remember him?” Frankie repeated as if he needed her to remember, as if that was the only chance she had to really be his mother. If she couldn’t tell him something he didn’t know about Gennaro, about how she saw him take his first steps, or how his tiny hand felt against hers, then Frankie had no use for her. She may as well leave.
“Well, I think so.” Vi pulled a chair close to the bed. “Do you mind if I sit. I’m feeling a little queasy.”
“Maybe you should call my father,” Frankie said.
“No, I’ll be okay, unless you’d rather I call him.”
“Yes, I think you should.” Frankie was startled by his own abruptness, but before he had the chance to apologize, Vi left the room. When she and Lenny returned, he pretended to be asleep.
Lenny apologized to Vi. He blamed the medication. She said that she understood. They spoke in hushed tones like parents concerned for their ailing child, and for the briefest moment, Frankie thought to open his eyes, but it was easier not to.
He heard them leave and soon he did fall asleep and, when he woke, the shades were drawn and the room was dark except for the glow of a small pen flashlight that Lenny shone on the pages of the book he was reading.
“You’re still here,” Frankie said.
Lenny closed his book and switched on the nightlight above Frankie’s bed. “It’s not that late,” he said. “They’re just bringing the trays around for lunch.”
“Guess I woke up too early.” They both chuckled as the smell of hospital food wafted into the room.
“So what did you think?” Lenny asked.
Frankie figured he was talking about Vi. “To be honest, I didn’t think much about her.”
“You said that it was okay for her to visit you.”
“And I’m still okay that she visited. I just don’t care. I didn’t have much to say to her. She said that she was sorry. Okay, she’s sorry. What else is there? We’re all sorry about something.”
Lenny didn’t respond. He smiled and nodded as a food service worker entered the room. Her bubbly voice filled the quiet. She cranked up Frankie’s bed and said that Frankie was looking better every day and that if only she were 20 years younger. She placed the food tray on the portable table that stretched across Frankie’s lap. When she removed the tray’s cover she announced “Spaghetti!” as if she were performing a magic trick.
Frankie was tempted to respond If you say so, but instead he just smiled and said: “Thank you.” She vanished as quickly as she had appeared.
Lenny opened his book again and alternated between reading and glancing at Frankie as Frankie ate the Jell-O, sipped milk through a straw, but passed on the spaghetti.
“You know the doctors say that you can leave soon ... probably tomorrow,” Lenny said. “No more hospital food.”
“Have you opened the store yet?”
“Not yet. I’ve been here, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Frankie said. “Guess I won’t be going back to school for the last semester after all. Remember you had mentioned that I had all my credits and there was no need to go back. You were right. No need. I can help you in the store.” Frankie picked at a small cup of sherbet.
“You know, Frankie, Vi cancelled her flight back to California so you two could try again.”
“I didn’t ask her to do that.”
“I know, but I was just wondering if I should tell her to come visit again or ...”
“Are you still in love with Vi?” Frankie surprised himself with this question. He had been thinking that the smell of the spaghetti was turning his stomach, and suddenly the words just spilled out like vomit.
“This isn’t about me, Frankie.”
“It isn’t about me either.” He felt as if he might explode, dropped his spoon, and grabbed the stack of cartoline postale. “This is about me, but you want to talk about Vi. I don’t give a fuck about Vi.” By now Frankie was sobbing. “They loved each other as much as Gennaro and I loved each other. We were their second chance. Now there’s no chance, no chance for anything.”
Lenny turned the table away, sat on the bed, held Frankie and rocked him back and forth as the screaming in Frankie’s head continued to pour from his mouth.
“I don’t give a fuck about Vi ... no one shot her ... she left ... it’s Gennaro I want back, not Vi ... it’s Gennaro ... please ... it’s Gennaro I want.”
A nurse rushed into the room, but Lenny held up his hand.
“But the other patients,” she said.
“Just close the door,” Lenny pleaded with the nurse. “I promise he’ll be calm in a minute.” Lenny kicked off his shoes, pushed the tray away from the bed, lay down next to Frankie, and slipped his arm under Frankie’s shoulder. He dimmed the nightlight. Frankie’s sobs subsided while they lay next to each other in the shadows, like when Frankie was a small boy and Lenny rescued him from nightmares, but there was no waking up from this nightmare.
“I loved him,” Frankie said.
“I know,” Lenny responded.
“I mean I really loved him.”
“I know,” Lenny repeated.
26
It was one of those icy cold winter days when everything felt as if it were about to shatter. Lenny parked the car in front of their house while Angie clutched at her heavy sweater, descended the front stoop, crossed the sidewalk, and opened the car door on the front pas
senger side. Her “Welcome home, Frankie,” condensed on the frigid air.
Neighbors hidden under winter bulk rushed in and out of Johnny Boo-Boo’s and Panisi’s. Mourners in black huddled in front of Romano’s. What was once Captain Beltrani’s store was being renovated into a betting parlor, and men carried sheetrock through the new front entrance. Only Lasante’s was quiet. A CLOSED sign hung in the front door.
Angie helped Frankie out of the car, and, just as he feared, a neighbor passed as they approached the front stoop. The old woman grabbed Frankie’s arms, almost knocking the cane out of his hand, and kissed him. A sharp pain stabbed at his neck. She rambled on in Italian — something about the Madonna— without noticing that Frankie winced. Angie intervened, also in Italian, and the woman nodded, kissed Frankie again, this time more gently, and shuffled around the corner, clutching a mesh shopping bag with a pastry box from Panisi’s.
“Are you alright?” Angie asked.
Frankie nodded.
Inside, the house smelled of sauce — a welcome change from the stench of hospital mush in hot plastic trays. It would just be the three of them at the dinner table — Frankie’s request — no other family members to celebrate his homecoming.
As he lay on the living room couch gazing through the archway into the dining room, he recalled the days after Filomena’s death and the many family and friends who spilled from the kitchen and dining room into the living room. The routines of life had been interrupted — people traveled from great distances to mourn and pay their respects at the wake, funeral, and round-the-clock meals, which marked Filomena’s passing. Watching Angie set the dining room table for three seemed too run-of-the-mill — as if Gennaro’s death had changed nothing, though in fact, for Frankie, everything had changed.
He had missed the ways that Gennaro’s death had interrupted life. He knew the personal grief, the constant dull ache that without warning escalated into excruciating pain, and he knew only too well the details of Gennaro’s death, but what he didn’t know were the details of how his death had, if only for a few days, cast a pall over 104th Street.
Angie swept from the dining room into the living room, gathered her apron between her hands to wipe them, reminding Frankie of Filomena. “As soon as your father comes in we’ll eat,” she said and turned back towards the kitchen.
Frankie called to her from the couch, and she paused and looked at him through the kitchen and dining room archways.
“Please tell me about Gennaro’s wake.” She frowned, and Frankie feared she might refuse, but she stepped into the dining room, removed her apron, draped it over the back of a dinning room chair, and sat on the rug next to Frankie.
This is how Lenny found them when he entered the house. Angie sitting on the oriental carpet next to the couch, her legs curled up under her, and her hand holding Frankie’s while he lay on the couch. Lenny removed his coat and sat quietly without interrupting.
At some point the three of them moved into the dining room where Lenny served dinner, starting with antipasto, and Angie continued to speak of Gennaro’s wake and funeral — how handsome he had looked, all the people who were there, the eulogies, the music, the flowers. And Frankie asked her many questions, more than she could possibly answer accurately, but she answered nonetheless, weaving what might have been yarns about the many ways that Gennaro’s death had interrupted life on 104th Street. Frankie saw the crowds and heard the choir. He smelled the overwhelming fragrance of the scores of floral arrangements and felt the press of many hands against his, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see Gennaro — not in a casket, no matter how beautiful he might have looked.
27
Being home, back in the familiar, there was no ignoring Gennaro’s absence, even during Frankie’s most private moments — especially in those private moments — when he inhaled the musk of his own body, but yearned for Gennaro’s scent, or when he touched himself pretending it was Gennaro’s touch and closed his eyes to see whom he could no longer see with his eyes open. Sometimes his fantasies were so vivid that he’d smile and forget for the briefest moment that it was his own hand giving him relief, pleasure was too strong a word. A sudden stab in his neck or thigh reminded him that pleasure had its price.
And often thoughts of Gennaro’s body also ushered memories of Christmas night. In sleep, Frankie no longer walked the beaches of Taormina, but woke to the sound of gunshots and lay alone in the incredible void that had replaced Gennaro.
On his laptop, he watched videos of Gennaro over and over, and on his cellphone he listened to Gennaro’s saved messages, but when the pain of remembering became too strong, he no longer watched or listened, until the missing outweighed the pain of remembering. Grief was a war between missing and remembering, but there was no comfort in forgetting. That time would help him forget was a terrifying thought, more terrifying than the memory of gunshots.
He placed the cartoline postale against photos and videos on his laptop, their warm sepia looked incongruous against the laptop’s cold titanium, as incongruous as his life without Gennaro. And the visits from well-meaning family and friends only reminded him more of Gennaro’s absence. Another conversation without Gennaro’s voice. “Not everything needs to turn into such a production,” was Gennaro’s standard retort. Now everything felt as if it mattered too much, but also didn’t matter at all, as if life had become a chain of contradictions.
One night, Angie mentioned that the spring semester would soon begin, and that she would have to spend most nights back at her place in Manhattan. She stared at the television. Frankie thought of Vi, which surprised him. He hadn’t thought of her at all since he came home.
“I guess Vi will also start teaching soon,” he said. Since Angie simply nodded, Frankie assumed that she knew about Vi’s visit. Lenny looked up from reading the newspaper.
“You know, I wasn’t asleep when you and Vi came back in the room,” Frankie said. “I just didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t know what else to say.”
Lenny put down the newspaper and examined the palms of his hands. “A couple of weeks out of the store and my hands have gone soft. Guess they just have to toughen up again.”
“Did you miss the store?” Frankie asked.
“Not at all.”
“Have you ever thought of selling it?”
“Do you want an honest answer?”
Frankie nodded.
“There’ve been times when that’s all I’ve thought about.”
Frankie didn’t respond. On the carpet next to the piano a single strip of Christmas tree tinsel caught Frankie’s eye. From where he sat, he could also see the picture of the Last Supper hanging above the credenza in the dining room, where less than two months ago Gennaro admired his own reflection in the glass. “Like an omen,” Gennaro had said about the picture. Now only the chandelier lights reflected in the glass.
“Yes, Vi will have to leave soon for California,” Lenny said.
“Makes sense to me, or she’ll have to talk very loud so her students can hear her,” Frankie said.
Lenny told Frankie to stop being such a smartass, followed by Angie suggesting that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The three of them chuckled and looked back at the television where talking heads discussed the upcoming inauguration of the first African American President.
“Pretty remarkable,” Angie said, but for Frankie it was just another reminder of how life would continue to change without Gennaro. When the news went to a commercial, Lenny again returned to the topic of Vi, and Frankie released a loud sigh.
“I get it,” Lenny said, “but you brought her up and maybe there’s a reason for that ...” Frankie tried to interrupt, but Lenny held up his hand as he did to the nurse in the hospital when Frankie became so upset. “Just let me get this out. After that it’s up to you. I promise. You see, there’s someone else you might want to meet before Vi returns to California.” Lenny leaned forward and the folded newspaper slipped from his lap onto the carpet. “You hav
e a sister.”
28
Marie was peeling eggplants when she noticed Lenny through the glass of the kitchen door. She grabbed the counter. Lena opened the door and Lenny rushed to Marie to keep her from collapsing onto the floor. He led her to a chair while she sobbed. “Our boys, Lenny, our beautiful boys. Gennaro is gone. What will we do? What can we do?” Like her mother-in-law had done years ago and only a few houses away, Marie cried for a son lost to the violence of vindictive men.
Lenny hadn’t seen Big Vinny since he was arrested. Neither Big Vinny nor Marie came to visit Frankie in the hospital or at home. Either they had surmised that Lenny blamed Big Vinny for what had happened, or given their greater loss, they expected Lenny to pay his respects first. Whatever their reason for not visiting Frankie, it was time for Lenny to break the ice, if in fact there was ice to be broken. Marie clasped her hands around Lenny’s and apologized for not coming to see Frankie.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I knew I would fall apart and just upset him. Please tell him I love him. You know he’s a son to me, especially now that my beautiful Gennaro is gone.”
Lenny remained silent for fear of crying himself and wondered if Big Vinny was home. Where else would he be? Since he was released from prison, few neighbors had seen him about, with the exception of attending Gennaro’s wake and funeral. Since the funeral, neighbors sometimes spotted him sitting in the passenger seat of his Lincoln, while Scungilli drove. Lenny assumed that he was home and heard Marie, but that he had become numb to her crying.
Like an old Italian woman, Marie pulled a tissue from her sleeve and wiped her tears, and she wore all black. Before Christmas night, Lenny would have found her dress to be an irritating example of how neighbors stubbornly clung to old ways, but now he was moved and oddly comforted by her appearance — the black mourning clothes, including dark stockings, even the knot of tear-soaked tissue under her sleeve. It was familiar and predictable when little else was. As a girl, Marie was a livewire, a good match for Big Vinny — not only in style, but also in temperament. She never let him boss her around. It broke Lenny’s heart to see her like this, but it also felt right, as if her appearance was an open window into her misery. No sense pretending that everything was fine when it wasn’t. There was a simple honesty in her attire that before now Lenny wouldn’t have appreciated. Marie regained her composure, sighed, and sat erect. With her blond hair brushed back into a bun, she resembled the clichéd image of Eva Perón.
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