The Saint of Lost Things

by Christopher Castellani

  Mamma Nunzia crossed her arms. “I just love when he talks like this,” she said. She sat on the ledge and turned her head toward the street. With her long, white hair unloosened, white nightgown, and white satin slippers, she looked like a weary angel. Papà Franco was not an easy husband, she’d told Maddalena more than once; he had a temper, like both his sons, and blamed her cautiousness for all the failed Grasso businesses. She’d warned him every time he’d sunk more of their savings into a new bakery or café, and each time he lost the money he accused her of putting a curse on him just so she could be right.

  “Maybe I’m not really Italian,” Julian said. “Never had a real job, never wanted one, not for long at least. No family either. Not anymore.”

  It was an attempt at a joke, but nobody laughed. Maddalena pulled her sweater to her neck. “We’re your family now,” she said.

  “You only get one family, though,” Julian said, this time without humor. “Only one that’s flesh and blood.”

  “If Italians could stick together,” said Papà Franco, “we’d rule the world. We came close! But you know what? We’re a lazy people too, in one way. We don’t want to fight; we just want to work—for somebody else, usually; that’s why I want my own business—and then we want to come home to our wives and children. Government, military, who cares—let them decide and we follow along.”

  Later, as she walked Julian down the steps to the sidewalk, Maddalena admitted she did not know what a union was, or where to find Cuba on a map. She’d wanted to imagine Gloria there, but she had no images to call up. It was an island, Gloria once said, but was it warm there? Green? Was it further away than Italy?

  “I should teach you geography,” Julian said. “Remind me. Next Friday we’ll look at the atlas. These days, it’s important to know where people come from.”

  “Yes,” Maddalena said. She wanted to learn as much as she could, starting with the meaning of the word atlas.

  ONCE, JUST BEFORE MADDALENA left Santa Cecilia, her brother had sung to her from the doorway of her bedroom. She was eighteen years old, standing at her window, memorizing the view of her backyard—the steep, rocky face of the mountain, the scatter of chestnut trees, the chickens circling one another behind the wire of their tiny coop. Claudio had taken her by surprise. “Terra straniera,” he sang, “quanta malinconia, quando ci salutammo e non so perchè” She kept her back to him, unsure if he sang in sympathy or resentment. Their two older brothers had gone missing in the war, and now Maddalena herself was about to abandon them. Their father’s heavy footsteps ceased midway up the stairs. In the kitchen, their sisters stopped chattering. The house suspended its creaking, the better to hear Claudio’s voice. After he finished the song, he slipped into the hall and slammed his bedroom door. Their father continued up the stairs, and the kitchen chattering recommenced. No one spoke of the serenade. Three days later, as Maddalena stepped into Antonio’s car, her mother begged her to forget she’d ever lived in this village.

  “Your new birthday is coming,” she’d said. “You’ll be born in Philadelphia, in the United States of America.” She held Maddalena’s hand through the window. Then, as the car pulled away, she fell to her knees on the dirt road and covered her face.

  Maddalena thought of that song—which she had not heard since, not even on the Sunday Italian radio program—as she brushed Mamma Nunzia’s hair. It was one of the few chores she enjoyed: one hundred strokes on each side to straighten the curls and give the hair its silky shine. The silent, repetitive motion lulled her, different as it was from the roar of a similar motion at the sewing machine.

  She sat behind Mamma Nunzia on the sofa in front of the mirrored living room wall so they could look at each other as she brushed. They had just eaten a rare midweek dinner at Mrs. Stella’s to celebrate Ida and Mario’s tenth anniversary—March 17—and afterward Antonio and Papà Franco had gone straight to bed.

  “What a beautiful meal,” Mamma Nunzia said, with a long deep breath, as if just having stepped into the fresh air. The faint wheeze in her chest, which often faded by the time Maddalena finished brushing, was not audible tonight. “I have to tell you,” she whispered. “We never thought we’d see Mario so successful. I’m very proud. I can finally say my sons are settled.” She folded her hands on her lap and stared at her reflection. She wore the white nightgown again, buttoned as always to her neck, embarrassed by her wrinkles and sagging skin. In the warmer months she never left the house without a sheer silk scarf tied in a knot under her chin. “Soon Mario will buy a place of his own, Papà and me will be gone, and this house will belong to you and Antonio and your baby.”

  “That will be many years from now,” Maddalena said, and smiled. “It won’t be a baby then.” She straightened her head and pointed it forward. “How’s this over the ears?”

  “You were sad tonight,” she said.

  “Tonight?” Maddalena said, her hands still on her face. I’m always sad, she could have said, but she didn’t want her to take offense. “A little nervous, maybe. About the baby.”

  “That’s natural,” she said. “Antonio didn’t pick another fight with you?”

  Maddalena shook her head.

  “He talks to you now, at least. Here and there. I’ve noticed. He’s not as stubborn as he wants to be.”

  “He has his nights,” Maddalena said. “I’m not an easy wife, either. Always crying, always looking backward.”

  “You’ve done better than I would have,” she said. “When Franco and I moved here, our parents had both been dead a long time. We had nothing left in Santa Cecilia, only debts—to your father, mostly, for all the food we couldn’t pay for. If it weren’t for Zio Domenico loaning us money, we’d never have been able to make the trip. It didn’t matter that we knew nobody in Wilmington. But for you—to leave everyone behind, to start a life with a new family—not your flesh-and-blood family, like Giulio said—it’s a miracle you didn’t throw yourself off the roof.” She tilted her head to the side. The wheezing in her chest started, and she undid the top button of her nightgown. “No matter what happens, you’re still young. I’d take your trouble anytime to be twenty-seven again.”

  Maddalena smiled. “And I think how nice your age must be. To have that settled feeling—”

  “Please, no,” she said. “My sons are settled. Not me. I won’t feel settled until they put me in the grave. And neither will you, I think, not with a Grasso for a husband. My only wish is to live to see what happens to all of you. Twenty years—that’s all I need. Twenty years more than what God has planned for me.”

  After the brushing, they cut that day’s loaves of Lamberti’s bread into slices and spread them across the dining-room table. Usually Ida would help, but they gave her the day off in honor of her ten years as Mario’s wife. They topped each slice with cold cuts, lettuce, and onions, drizzled oil and vinegar on top, then wrapped the sandwiches in foil. They put each sandwich in a brown bag with a paper towel and a different selection of fruit. Everyone at Eighth Street was picky: Papà Franco ate only bananas; Mrs. Stella’s stocked crates of grapes for garnish, so Mario never wanted grapes; Ida must have citrus, especially oranges; Antonio preferred raw tomatoes, sliced in half, with a thick crust of salt. These preferences changed weekly. Just last Thursday, Papà Franco had come home, set his half-full lunch bag on the kitchen counter, and declared he’d never again touch a green apple.

  “Remember,” Mamma said, when their work was done and Maddalena walked up the stairs. “A sad face makes a woman look older. Right now I’d put you at sixty-five.”

  Maddalena flashed a halfhearted smile and grabbed the banister for support. After every few steps, she stopped to rest. She could not remember a day in the last seven months when she did not feel dizzy—first with fear, then with discomfort. Strange thoughts overtook her and made her nauseous: that the baby had fingernails scraping against her belly, that the baby had hair, that the baby was burping and urinating inside her. Whenever the baby moved, and she felt a
n elbow or a knee pushing through the skin of her belly, she feared it would poke through and rupture her fragile body.

  When she got to the bedroom, she found Antonio on his knees, in his socks, in front of their closet.

  “Do you need something?” she asked, startling him. “I thought you were tired.”

  “My old pair of shoes,” he said. “The brown ones.”

  “They’re in the basement,” she said, and held onto the edge of the dresser. “What do you want those for? They have holes. And they’re out of style.”

  “They’re comfortable,” said Antonio. “I don’t like to wear my good shoes all the time. They get ruined too fast, and then we have to spend money.”

  “What size does Mario wear? It might make sense for the two of you to share—”

  But he was already halfway down the stairs. Quickly, Maddalena unbuttoned her dress and pulled her maternity nightgown—on loan from Ida—off the hanger. She didn’t like for Antonio to see her in her underwear, not with her body misshapen like this. Other nights, either she waited for him to fall asleep, or she changed clothes in the bathroom.

  He came back in the dusty brown shoes.

  “You’re going out?” she asked.

  “My head feels like it’s full of cobwebs,” he said. “I need the fresh air.”

  “But it’s so late—”

  He got on his knees again and rearranged the boxes on the floor of the closet. The piles kept falling over because he’d mismatched the tops with the bottoms. In frustration, he smashed one of the boxes against the wall, collapsing it into a useless flat of cardboard.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

  “Trouble?” He froze. “No, of course not. What kind of trouble could I be in?” He stood, put his hands on his hips.

  “I’m your wife,” she said. “You can tell me.”

  He seemed to relax a moment. “Renato Volpe,” he said. His tone was tender, apologetic. “You remember him, from the pizzeria. You don’t like him. But he’s opening a new restaurant, and he needs my help. That’s all.”

  “So you do still see him,” she said. “That’s beautiful news.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Why do you have to wear old shoes for his new restaurant?”

  “I’ve already told you too much,” he said.

  “You told me almost nothing!”

  He stood and faced her. “I’m not in trouble,” he said, and stepped away, all the tenderness gone. “I’m the one who stops the trouble. That’s all you need to know. When you need to know something else, I’ll tell you.”

  “Please don’t walk out,” Maddalena said.

  The slam of the front screen door. The heels of his old, dusty shoes on the porch.

  12

  Riverview Drive

  WHEN HE THINKS BACK on that spring, Antonio can’t remember once worrying about Maddalena’s health. In fact, he considered pregnancy itself a symptom of durability, and pregnant women stronger—more vigorous, more resilient—than nonpregnant ones. How else to explain the village women who toiled in the fields up to the last push, then delivered their babies in the mud? Pregnant women fattened, their cheeks took on a ruddy glow, their nerves calmed, and they settled into a state of focused serenity—all signs of potency and robustness. Yes, they felt some discomfort sleeping and the occasional upset stomach, but these seemed merely reminders to take care of themselves, to nurture the life inside them.

  Maddalena’s pregnancy set Antonio’s life on one definite track, at least, and for that he was grateful. The weekday routine—work by seven a.m., dinner no more than a half hour after he returned, sleep by ten—pleased them both now that a reward waited at the end of the monotonous nine months. Only when Renato needed him did Antonio sneak off to Fourth and Orange, and of those nights he and Maddalena seldom spoke. Better just to turn up the music on the radio, Antonio thought, and pretend she could not hear him creak down the stairs.

  Weekends, he slept late and spent the first hours of the afternoon in the bathroom. He grew accustomed to waking at eleven to find the newspaper neatly folded on a tray beside two empty coffee cups. The moment Maddalena heard his footsteps on their bedroom floor, she’d climb the stairs to fill one cup with a shot of espresso, the other with brewed Maxwell House the way he liked it: no sugar, lots of cream. Antonio didn’t want to speak to anyone—including Maddalena—until he’d taken care of his business in the bathroom and caught up on the state of the world. He lied to his family about having digestive problems, and while they whispered about his eating habits, he enjoyed the safety of the close quarters behind the locked door, the comfort of his naked thighs against the porcelain, the sterilized quiet. He read slowly and always regretted reaching the final section, for he’d soon be forced to rejoin the chaos of the house. This was relaxation, he thought; the rest of you can waste your money on resorts and trips to Wildwood, but two hours alone up here is enough vacation for me.

  Late March surprised everyone with a stretch of warm sunny days, and Antonio saved the final section of the weekend edition—classifieds, radio and television listings—for the less-reliable solitude of the back porch. By that time of year he was starved for light, catching only a glimpse of it on the early-morning ride to the plant, missing it by an hour on winter evenings. The weekend was his only chance to feel the sun on his face. So he sat in his shirtsleeves just outside the shade of the grape arbor.

  The arbor ran the length of the back porch and half its width. Under it sat two wooden picnic tables painted red, at which the Grassos ate most of their meals in the summertime. At the end of the season, the tables will be blotched with squished purple grapes, staining many a pair of trousers. The fruit will fall on their heads or into the bowls of pasta they are eating; more than once, Mario will shake one of the vines and send a shower onto the heads of his wife and children.

  The other half of the porch was part concrete slab and part vegetable garden, where the women grew lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, green beans, and a few carrots. Behind the garden, a wire cage held live chickens. The chickens would live a while as Grasso pets, delighting Nunzia and Nina with their frantic clucks and old-ladylike waddling; and then, one at a time, Mamma would stretch them across a board and take a cleaver to their necks. The girls never witnessed this, never noticed there were different chickens each week; they were too busy playing in the pile of feathers Mamma left for them by the back door.

  It was onto the concrete slab that Antonio dragged a chair and sat in the unexpected late March sun. Bunches of hard, green pearls were just beginning to appear on the vines. The fruit would ripen in just a few months, when Antonio and his father would again argue over whether or not to crush them for wine this year. Didn’t it always turn out either thickly sweet or bitter as vinegar, good only to bring to someone like Giulio Fabbri and drink with a plate of cookies? Why bother trying, when they could get a case of Chianti wholesale from Ida’s brother’s store? Besides, there were worms. Antonio had seen a few already, squeezing in and out of the tight clusters. Ida let the girls eat the grapes once they were ready, even though they always complained of stomachaches afterward.

  Kids chased one another across the lawn of the Presbyterian church next door, enjoying the break from six harsh months of cold. The air smelled damp and loamy, like freshly turned earth. The budding trees rushed to clothe themselves now that spring had come early, and people like Antonio had taken notice.

  He narrowed his eyes at his paper. “KITCHEN EMPLOYEES for Concord Country Club,” he read. “Experienced, sober men only.” He was not looking for a new job but liked to know what was available just in case. He even read the “For Coloreds Only” ads, if just to make sure they didn’t offer a better salary. He wondered why this particular ad called specifically for “sober men.” He had never been to the Concord Country Club and imagined it must be grand—white pillars, rolling hills, valet parking—but was it so hard to find good help that they had to warn applicants not to show up drunk?
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br />   He looked up at the second-floor windows of the house and caught Maddalena watching him.

  The kids on the lawn, a trio of out-of-breath boys in shorts and bare feet, staggered closer toward the chain-link fence that marked the border between the church and Grasso property. Antonio could distinguish their movements through the dead vines that webbed the fence. The boys tackled each other, rolled around for a while, then sat panting with their legs outstretched, hands on the ground behind them.

  “Two-Ton Tessie, that’s your type,” one of the boys said. Antonio leaned forward to hear them better. When he looked up at the window again, the drapes were drawn.

  “So she’s got a little extra,” said another boy. “So what? Least I—”

  “More cushion for the pushin’,” interrupted the third boy, and they erupted in laughter.

  Antonio covered his smile with the newspaper, remembering how he used to gather like this with his own friends back in the village. Their favorite spot was the hill in the woods behind the spring, a steep, muddy incline that became a safe hideout from their parents and anyone else looking to busy them with chores. One summer, his last in Santa Cecilia, a group of older boys cleared a line of sight from a certain rock up high, so that when they sat on the rock they had an unbroken view of the women bending down to fetch water. Oh, the thrill of that flash of skin! The breasts falling against the sheer fabric, the delicious possibility they might escape the cruel confines of the blouse! How rare and wonderful to witness this unguarded moment, the one time of day this girl thought no one was watching. And if she threw her hair over her shoulder and bent lower to sip directly from the source—eyes closed, lips parted—a hush would sweep across the village; the sparrows would stop midflight, the leaves would cease to flutter; and the boys would harden into statues with their mouths dropped open, certain that life offered nothing more magnificent than this.