The Saint of Lost Things

by Christopher Castellani

  As that final summer wore on, the woods grew thicker and the boys took turns climbing the trees to reclip the leaves, pull the branches off, and maintain the line of sight. In September, on the boat to the United States, Antonio thought less of the country he might never see again than of the rush of beating his friends to the rock each morning, of not knowing which girl would bow before him.

  Since then, when has he felt such a rush? Upon his return to Santa Cecilia thirteen years later, as an old man of twenty-six, when he saw Maddalena standing on the steps of the church. He’d felt rich then, his pockets full with profits from the early success of the Pasticceria Grasso. Maddalena had been a child when he and his family left Italy, and now there she was: one of the young women he’d have longed to catch at the spring. And he was not a boy anymore, but a worthy suitor with an entire country to offer, and blind faith that the pasticceria would bring his family great wealth. He invited himself to her house for dinner, purchased chocolate and wine in her family’s store, and soon found himself on the terrace with her father discussing the business of marriage. Two decades before, Antonio’s family could not afford to shop in that grocery; now Aristide Piccinelli was promising Antonio the hand of his youngest daughter. According to Aristide, Maddalena was involved in an unfortunate romance—less an engagement than a teenage infatuation; puppy love, they’d call it here—and in need of quick rescue. “You came at the perfect time,” Aristide had said to him, and they drank a toast to the future. Less than a month later, Antonio was a married man.

  He rarely thought of Maddalena’s first love, and of course never spoke of him to anyone. Though they’d grown up together in the village and Antonio once lost to him in a footrace, he attempted to scrub his name and face from his memory. He was not Vito Leone with the oval head, hairless chin, and surprisingly quick legs; he was merely the Infatuation. At first Antonio counted him among the many village soldiers who’d died in the war, though he’d somehow managed to avoid the draft. An ocean separated Maddalena from this man, but he did have family in Philadelphia—a father and two sisters—and no good reason, as far as Antonio knew at the time, to stay in Santa Cecilia. Who could say when he might show up on their doorstep?

  In his darker moments, Antonio used to imagine the Infatuation crossing the water to work in his father’s tailor shop and live close to the woman he’d lost. Once a year for the first three of his marriage, Antonio drove to the shop—a dingy little place on Market Street—and peered into the front window. No one resembling Vito worked behind the counter, only his elderly father and one of his sisters. Was he off on a delivery? Putting out the garbage? Just in case, Antonio walked around and around the block for the better part of the afternoon, casually strolling past the store, convinced he’d catch Vito walking hand in hand with Maddalena, back from the sort of midday rendezvous he himself had once enjoyed with lonely American housewives. Sometimes he blamed the Infatuation—the memory of him, mostly—for Maddalena’s inability to conceive and wondered how long it would take for the curse of him to lift.

  Then came the letter from Zio Domenico, the Grassos’ last living relative in Santa Cecilia. Buried in the pages of sentences praising the virtues of Communism was the news that the Infatuation had married Maddalena’s older sister. After a brief apprenticeship in Naples, he’d returned to Santa Cecilia and remained there. If he’d had any desire to follow Maddalena to America, he had not indulged it.

  Antonio did not know what to do with this information. He had to communicate it to Maddalena, but he did not want to say the words himself. Surely she still felt something for the man. Separation, he knew, only fueled puppy love; it certainly did not kill it. Possibly Maddalena even entertained a secret wish for him to appear at her window and coax her down. It was the stuff of her novels—young girls shimmying down trellises, undernourished paupers who reveal themselves as princes—and Antonio had no illusions about a woman’s enduring need for romance, or the revenge she might want to take on a poaching sister. The American wives had taught him some of that. But now that the book was closed on the Infatuation, her fantasies should come to an end. It was time for Maddalena to let go of the past and devote her full heart to her husband.

  Just reading the name Vito Leone in Zio Domenico’s elderly script and being reminded of the flesh-and-blood existence of a man who once had been his wife’s fidanzato made Antonio want to smash his fist against the wall. Instead, he stuffed the letter in Ida’s pocket and asked her to read it to Maddalena. “Take an afternoon,” he’d said, handing her fifteen dollars, nearly half of his weekly salary. “Bring her to Merchandise Mart. Make her buy something nice for herself.” Ida had given him a stunned look. But Antonio knew no other way to tell Maddalena that not only had Vito Leone married, but that, after a brief courtship, he had chosen Carolina.

  According to Ida, Maddalena had little reaction to the news. They’d sat across from each other in the restaurant inside the Five and Ten, two young wives out Christmas shopping. As Ida read Zio Domenico’s letter aloud, Maddalena had nodded and closed her eyes. Her hands shook a bit, nearly spilling her soda, but nothing more. She read the letter to herself, folded it, and handed it back to Ida without a word. Maybe she had prepared herself for this long in advance or knew already from one of her mother’s letters, and the ink on the page merely confirmed a loss she’d already grieved. That night, and throughout the weeks leading up to the holiday, she showed no sign that anything had changed.

  But, in Antonio’s mind at least, something had changed. For the first time in his marriage, he needed Maddalena to declare her devotion to him, to say she no longer felt the infatuation for Vito Leone. Hadn’t enough time gone by for her not only to forgive Antonio for taking her from her village, but to fall in love with him the way he had done with her? He was no longer the stranger watching her on the steps of the church, threatening to steal her from her family. He was the patient husband who’d indulged her the nights she turned away from him in sadness and rage, who’d comforted her through the locked bedroom door when he heard her sobbing. He’d proven himself again and again: by arranging expensive telephone calls to Italy, by trying to earn enough money to one day return for a visit, by taking her to costly doctors and specialists. He’d hidden his disappointment when, month after month, she held her hands over her stomach and shook her head. What more could be asked of a husband he did not know.

  That was the Christmas they snuck out of the house and drove to Route 1 to look at the Cadillacs. He’d told her he loved her, with hopes she’d profess her love for him. But she’d only nodded—no differently, maybe, than she’d nodded to Ida upon hearing the news of her sister’s marriage. How unreachable you are, he’d thought then, his hands gripping the wheel of the car. How hard you’ll make me work, all my life, to deserve you.

  THE WARM SPELL ENDED in late March, when winter played its final hand. Most Wilmingtonians, wind-battered, chilled by weeks of relentless rain, stayed indoors. The city was quiet, as if sleeping late in hopes it would wake to better weather. There seemed always to be a train passing, belching black smoke, hooting gloomily in the gray afternoon. Mud collected in pools along the sidewalks, splattering the cuffs of Antonio’s good work pants. Rain leaked through the roof of the shed and soaked the few remaining blocks of wood. When lit, the wood smoldered and smelled of rotten fruit. In the hours after dinner, the Grassos would gather around the fireplace, Nunzia and Nina at the edge of the hearth holding their noses with one hand and reaching toward the flames with the other. Only Maddalena, to whom the cold weather was a great relief, kept her distance. She sat alone on the sofa at the other end of the room, fanning herself with a folded-up section of the Morning News.

  One evening, a phone call from Renato summoned Antonio to the home of his mother, Rosa. “Mario,” Antonio said, shaking his head, when he hung up the phone. “He needs my help with one of the waiters.”

  “Gilberto again?” asked Ida.

  “Gilberto?” said Antonio. He reached
for his hat. “Yes, that’s the one.” He did not look at Maddalena, but the rest of the family either nodded or went on with their conversations. It had become easy for Antonio to lie in situations like this, though he did it more out of convenience than necessity. If he told them all the truth, that Renato Volpe had breathlessly begged him to get to Seventh Street as soon as he could, they’d delay him with a hundred questions: Were the police involved? Did he owe money? Did he get some girl in trouble? They’d wait up for him or expect a detailed explanation in the morning.

  This way, all he had to do was stop by Mrs. Stella’s and tell Mario to make up some problem with Gilberto the waiter. This way, he and Maddalena had no reason to argue over the girls who may or may not have been waiting for him behind the counter of the pizzeria. When he got home, he could look her in the eye and say, “I told Mario a hundred times never to hire a Sicilian,” and she’d play along by telling a story of a lazy woman from Palermo who’d just started at the Golden Hem. The further they extended the lie, the stronger the bond it forged. They could tell the truth to Ida or Mario or any of their friends, but with no one else had they established so many enduring illusions: the peace Maddalena felt in America, Antonio’s long walks “for air,” their confidence that God would give them a child. Without these illusions, they had merely an ordinary connection; with the illusions, they had powerful bullets to fire at each other when the time came.

  Antonio had been to Rosa Volpe’s house once before, in the early morning, after he’d watched Renato and Cassie soap the windows of Waters’s taxi. He’d sat with them in the dark under the dining room table, careful not to wake the old lady, waiting for enough time to go by so they could head home. They had not hidden in Rosa’s house often, fearing for her safety if they were followed, but that night they felt untouchable. The Waters house had been hit more than ten times—with stones, paint, eggs, trash, mud, and now soap—and Renato and Cassie were growing bored. Worse, the man hadn’t budged. It seemed he’d stay at 1932 until the place burned down.

  Even in the dim lamplight, the interior of Rosa Volpe’s home strained Antonio’s eyes. Every wall was painted a glossy red, bright and bloody, that took a few moments to fathom. Only a few decorations interrupted the onslaught of color: a small framed photograph of the pope in the hallway, a crucifix above the mantel, a bust of Saint Peter on a credenza by the front window. Dark wood molding, in an ornate pattern of spires and lattice, ran along the ceilings and around the entryways. Even the baseboards, ten inches high, had been carved into that same design. Mahogany chairs with plush red cushions surrounded the dining-room table; a red sectional couch formed an L around the living room; red velvet drapes shielded the window. Who could relax in here, Antonio wondered, as he stepped onto the red wall-to-wall carpet. Did Rosa expect a visit from Pius XII himself? It was like entering an enormous confessional. All that was missing was the kneeler and the screen and the dour face of Father Moravia.

  “You knew my father was a carpenter?” said Renato, as he sat between Buzzy and Cassie on the couch. He gestured toward the moldings. “See what I mean about the property value of this place?”

  “May he rest in peace,” said Rosa, in Italian. She wore silk slippers, a nightgown, and her white hair pinned in a bun. She must have been in her eighties, but she sprang to her feet like a teenager the moment she saw Antonio, shuffled to the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a tray full of cookies.

  “Sit down, Mamma Rosa,” said Cassie. “I’ll do that.” Yet Cassie remained on the couch, legs crossed, biting her thumbnail. She had on shiny black boots and a series of silver bracelets on her right wrist. After Antonio took two amaretti, Rosa presented the tray to Buzzy and Renato then set it on the coffee table. She sat next to Antonio in one of the dining-room chairs and watched Cassie reach over and grab the last of the ciambelline.

  Other than the poisonous looks between Cassie and her future mother-in-law, Antonio sensed no emergency in the room. He took two more amaretti as the conversation turned from the unpredictable weather back to carpentry. Renato told the story of his father’s insistence on keeping a block of wood in the hospital bed with him, so he’d have something to carve as he waited to die. He pointed to the large crucifix above the mantel: a crude figure on two thick slats. The edges of the cross had not been smoothed, and the figure’s hands and feet remained unformed squares shot through with nails. “He was working on that the day he went,” said Renato. “It was in three pieces—the body and the two pieces of the cross. I nailed them together myself.”

  “Lo vedrò fra poco,” said Rosa. I’ll be seeing him soon. She knew English well, according to Renato, but spoke only Italian tonight.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Renato said, in English, and translated her words for Buzzy and Cassie.

  “Yes, you’re not going anywhere,” repeated Cassie.

  “I’m ready,” Rosa said. “I’m not afraid.”

  Buzzy shrugged at Cassie, and the two exchanged a smile. He wore a blazer and bow tie and had fixed his hair in perfect, shiny curls. Gold rings adorned his fingers. “Where have you been?” Antonio asked. “Dinner at the White House?”

  “Close,” Buzzy said. “Riverview Drive. That’s why he called you.”

  Rosa set both feet on the floor and stretched her nightgown across her knees, making a sort of table. She nudged Antonio, and from her sleeve she pulled three slips of paper. She arranged them on her lap. Two were funeral cards, the other some sort of poem handwritten in ink.

  “This was my Frankie,” Rosa said, and pointed to the card with the image of St. Francis and his lambs. Above the picture was written:

  FRANCESCO VOLPE

  SEPTEMBER 6, 1862—SEPTEMBER 20, 1933

  This was followed by a short prayer and the date and location of the funeral service. “Thirty-seven years together,” she said. “You know I still see his face in front of me? Right now. I can touch it!” She held up her palm and lay it on Francesco’s invisible cheek.

  Antonio nodded. Renato was whispering something he could not hear to Cassie and Buzzy.

  The other funeral card had a picture of a female saint, haloed and holding a spear. Rosa handed it to him.

  ROSA MARIA MORELLI VOLPE

  JANUARY 2, 1872—

  “Dante Pavani made this for me,” she said, referring to one of the two Italian undertakers in Wilmington. The Grassos were loyal to the other one, though they had yet to need his services. “It’s all prepared. When I go, all Dante has to do is put the date on the card. Frankie paid for everything already. The grave, the service, the food. Everything.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And I have a few surprises.”

  “He was a good man,” Antonio said, though he’d never met him.

  “The best!” Rosa said. “We grew up on the same street. I never lived a day on this earth when I didn’t know him.” She gazed across the room, her watery eyes fixed first at the empty hallway, then at Renato and Cassie on the sofa. Renato had his arms around her. Cassie leaned in closer, her hair falling against his cheek, their knees touching. Rosa jerked her head, as if to shake off a spell. “Leggi,” she said to Antonio. She handed him the handwritten note. “Read.”

  Rosa Volpe was a flower that bloomed in the soil of two

  countries.

  Like a rose, she wilted and died and came back to life.

  She blooms now forever in the garden of heaven next to her

  beloved Francesco,

  Where there is no death, only sunshine and nourishing rain.

  To the young people, Rosa says: fall in love and forget about

  tomorrow.

  To the old people, Rosa says: stay in love and forget about

  yesterday.

  To everyone here, she says: do not cry for Rosa Volpe. She does

  not cry for you.

  She knows when you are coming.

  “What do you think?” she asked Antonio. She sat up in her seat and lifted her chin, clearly proud. “I said the
se words myself. And then the poet across the street wrote them down.”

  “Giulio Fabbri?” Antonio asked.

  “Sì,” she said. “He helped me a little bit, but the words are all mine. Don’t let him tell you different. Renato will read it at my funeral. You’ll be there?”

  “Mamma,” Renato called, from across the room. “Leave the poor man alone.”

  “Is that the eulogy again?” asked Cassie.

  “Zitto!” said Rosa, waving them off. “You’ll be there?” she asked Antonio again. “At my funeral? All of Wilmington is coming.”

  “That’s twenty years from now,” said Antonio. “Who knows where I’ll be? I could be one of the flowers of heaven myself.” He grinned and patted her leg. “But if I’m still alive, I promise: I’ll be at your funeral in my best suit.”

  “Twenty years!” Rosa said, shaking her head, her face serious. “No, Signor. I can’t wait that long. I used to cry to myself, ‘Oh, Rosa, if you were only a young girl still, with a pretty face!’ Now every day I beg God to take me in my sleep, in this chair, anywhere. I’m so tired all the time. And I—” She stopped and glanced in Renato and Cassie’s direction. Then she leaned toward Antonio and whispered, “I don’t want to see what happens to them. I want to remember him like a boy. Before she came.”

  Antonio nodded noncommittally, and turned toward his friends on the sofa. Renato was bringing out the good cigars. “You’re celebrating something,” Antonio said, taking one. “That’s why you dragged me here.”

  “I had to get you out of the house somehow,” said Renato. “You live like a monk these days.”

  “So you got Riverview Drive.”

  “Grand opening: May 21,” said Renato, with his arms outstretched. “Fine dining for the finest diners in Wilmington.”

  “And you’re in after all?” Antonio asked Buzzy.