The Saint of Lost Things

by Christopher Castellani

  From her purse, Maddalena pulls a small envelope addressed in slanted and shaky handwriting to La Famiglia Grasso, 2121 W. 8th Street, Wilmington, Del. Inside is a card made of thick ivory paper, the kind used in wedding invitations. Printed at the top of the card in fancy script is Rosa’s name and date of birth, followed by the inked-in date of her death. Below that:

  See Rosa One Last Time

  ___th _______________, 19 _____

  6–8 p.m.

  Pavani Funeral Home

  Bayard and Lancaster Avenue

  Rosa and Francesco are Reunited!

  Time to Celebrate!

  ____th ______, 19 ______

  ______a.m.

  St. Anthony of Padua Church

  901 N. DuPont Street

  Wilmington, Delaware

  Reception Immediately Following

  Trattoria Renato

  3 Riverview Drive

  New Castle, Delaware

  Be Happy and Love Life

  “For You Know Neither the Day nor the Hour” (Matthew 25:13)

  “You didn’t ask yourself, ‘Who are all these people?’” Maddalena says. “She must have sent these to the whole city. Not just Italians, either.”

  “But not to me.”

  She thinks for a moment. “Must be a mistake,” she says, and shrugs. “Or it got lost in the mail. Or she just forgot. You always forget the people right in front of you.”

  Julian turns over the envelope. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. “So these people are mostly strangers?”

  “I think so. They probably still wonder how they knew her.”

  “When my time comes,” Julian says, “I hope I’m as ready as she was.”

  The woman next to Maddalena stirs. “Whatever’s next,” she says, “it can’t be worse than here.” She clutches her purse to her chest and stares straight ahead.

  “I’ll never be ready,” says Maddalena, turning away from the woman. “Not anymore. There’s too much I want to see.” She leans in toward Julian, and for a moment he feels as though they are alone again in his kitchen, and the snow is falling, and she is about to confide in him. Instead she says, “You can’t bring a baby into this world and not want to live a hundred years.”

  “Just you wait,” says the old woman. She puts her hand on Maddalena’s knee and laughs.

  By ten o’clock, the crowd has thinned, and Dante Pavani stands beside a slouching Renato at the front door. “See you tomorrow,” people say, on the way out. Julian, Maddalena, and Antonio leave together. They walk briskly so that Antonio can get home and drive Maddalena to the hospital. She will sleep there tonight, she says, on the chair in the hallway outside the glassed-in room, to make up for the four hours wasted at Rosa Volpe’s viewing. She will wake early, attend the funeral, but skip the interment and the lunch. She refuses to celebrate anyone’s death, even Rosa’s, while her child fights for life. Antonio does not argue.

  They stop to part at Eighth and Bancroft. “We’ll see you at the party,” Maddalena says, as she kisses his cheek. “Mamma loves to cook for you.”

  “Leave him alone,” Antonio says. He winks at Julian. “Don’t you know he’s a busy man these days? What’s he want with our parties?”

  They turn down Eighth. Watching them, Julian finally remembers to say, “I’m praying for little Prima!” but they are already a half block off, rushing arm in arm toward the car.

  IN THE THREE MONTHS since Julian’s first date with Helen, they have seen two movies, shopped for produce on Union, and drunk wine many evenings with her family in the living room of their home on Franklin Street. He has sat beside her on the piano bench as she played, though he has yet to sing along. Her son, Michael, still eyes him coolly, but this Julian understands. He has better luck with Abigail, who calls him Mister Fabbri and shows him her schoolwork. They play checkers, and she giggles when he says, “Go ahead and king me” in an Irish brogue.

  On Helen’s front steps, she switches off the porch lights and kisses him, briefly, before sending him on his way. She waits on the porch, in the dark, until he turns the corner. This happens at the end of every trip to Franklin Street, and is worth every awkward silence, every suspicious question from Helen’s mother, Barbara.

  All through Rosa’s viewing and funeral and the party that followed, Julian worried what he would serve Helen the following Saturday—the first time she was to come to his house. He had sent her a card through the mail to invite her for “drinks and dessert,” which he thought was a gentlemanly way to suggest that he could not cook for her. But should he buy a cake? Fine chocolates? How would he fill the hours afterward? What should he wear, now that she’d already seen all his good clothes? He made a special trip to Wanamaker’s to buy a new white dress shirt, but not until he got home did he realize it was identical to the one he already owned.

  He spent two days sweeping the floors of his house and wiping surfaces with a damp cloth. The more he cleaned, the more he found to clean. He emptied and restocked the refrigerator, mopped behind the stove, and rid the windows of streaks. He brushed the inside of the toilet. He fluffed the pillows on the couch and shook dust from the drapes. And yet when he stood back to admire it all in the light, he saw only dinginess and grime.

  Now Saturday night has finally come, and Julian has nothing left to clean. He has not eaten in twenty-four hours. One plate of Three Little Bakers cookies waits on the kitchen table, another on the coffee table, but he does not want to disturb the careful arrangement. On a tray, beside two clean glasses, breathes a bottle of Chianti. Though he’d prefer a chilled white wine on this muggy night, he defers to Helen; white wine makes her sneeze. The espresso is already packed in the percolator, which sits on the burner. For music, he chooses Sinatra. Helen has never said she likes Sinatra, but Julian can’t imagine how anyone could not.

  At ten past eight, the lights of her brother-in-law’s police car appear in the front window, silently swirling. He opens the door to find Helen walking toward him. She wears a simple green dress that shows her figure, her music-note pin, and her hair up, the way he likes it, though he has never told her. In high heels, she is as tall as Julian, but tonight she does not wear high heels. She has worn them only once, in fact—the first night on her porch, when she slipped them off to kiss him.

  Inside, she drinks her wine quickly, and it occurs to Julian for the first time that she, too, might be nervous. “Let me guess,” she says, as he leads her on a tour of the house. “Brown was your mother’s favorite color.”

  “She used to say it hides the dirt,” says Julian. “But she was always cleaning, so I don’t know what dirt there was to hide.”

  “You kept up the tradition,” she says, and rubs her finger along one of the bookshelves.

  In the living room, she holds his family photograph in her hand and says, “You can see it in their faces, what proud people they were,” and sets it back gently on the coffee table. “You must miss them very much.” She lingers in front of the poster of Manhattan, pointing out buildings, and talks wistfully of what it might be like to live in a big city. Unlike Julian, she has been to a Broadway show and even glimpsed one of the actors afterward, buying a newspaper like a regular person.

  At the closed door to his bedroom, which he has not bothered to tidy up, Julian stops and turns around. “Well, that’s it,” he says. He opens his arms. “You’ve seen King Julian’s palace.”

  They sit side by side on the couch, drinking more wine than usual. Before too long, the bottle is nearly empty, and neither of them wants to be the one to finish it. The windows are open, but there is no breeze—only the flash of passing cars, the sputter of engines, and occasional footsteps on the sidewalk. Julian is grateful for the beginning of every new Sinatra song, as it gives him and Helen something to talk about: whether or not they like this particular one, and why. If Julian talks slowly, he can stretch the conversation for half the length of the song. It is never like this at her house, or at the movies; only here.
>
  The end of side B comes, and in the long, scratchy silence Helen says, “Tom told me not to tell you this, but—” She looks down. “Last night? They found that little colored boy, the one who was missing. But you can’t tell anyone I told you, because Tom could get in trouble—”

  “Abraham?”

  “Was that his name?”

  “The boy across the street, yes. Abraham Waters. That’s who they found?”

  “I think that’s the name.”

  “Is he alive?”

  She shakes her head. “The boy they found, no. Tom said he’s been dead for a month, at least.”

  Julian stands, but he has nowhere to go. He walks to the front window. “Where?” he asks. He parts the drapes. “When?”

  There are no lights on in the Waters house. He hasn’t seen the father or the taxi in a while—weeks, maybe—but the truth is that he hasn’t been paying much attention. His mind has been on Helen and Maddalena and Rosa Volpe. He doesn’t remember the last dream he had of the boy. He has mentioned him to Helen only once, in passing, as if his disappearance meant little to him. He wasn’t sure of her stand, if any, on the Negro question, and was afraid to be on the wrong side of it.

  They found him lying in the woods near the Brandywine River, Helen says. The police were looking for someone else and came upon his body by mistake. The smell had led them. Tom wouldn’t say what he’d died from, only that it was not an accident. Until Tom pointed out the house when he dropped her off, Helen didn’t realize that not only was there a colored family across the street from Julian, but that it was the same family who was missing their son.

  “Does he know, his father?” Julian asks.

  “I’m not sure,” says Helen. “But I would think so, by now.”

  “What could they want from a little boy like that?” Julian says. He folds his hands across his chest, to steady himself. “Money? He doesn’t have any money. He was good in school, the father told me. He liked music. Never got out of line. Never hurt anybody.”

  “You talked to them?”

  “Sometimes,” Julian admits.

  Helen is quiet for a moment. “That surprises me,” she says. “But it shouldn’t, from what I know of you.”

  “The father gave up on him too soon.”

  “What do parents know anymore?” Helen says. “Even the teenagers have secret lives nowadays. When I was a girl, I never left the house without my mother. I’m sure it was the same for you. But we’re a different generation. By the time Abigail’s grown up—it’s too scary to imagine.”

  “I read the paper every day,” Julian says, his eyes on the dark windows, the empty driveway across the street. The world turns on cruelty, he might tell her. Not love. Not generosity. There are only two kinds of people left on earth—those whom grief has touched, and those it is coming for. If he could lift the roofs of the houses in his sight, of all the houses in Wilmington, and catch the people unaware, he’d see the desperate faces they try so hard to conceal. Instead Julian says, “I’ve read a thousand books, probably. But I don’t understand one bit how the world works. Sometimes I think I was never meant to live in it.”

  The needle skips at the end of the record again and again, like a heartbeat. Helen lifts it, blows the dust off the tip, and replaces it on the holder. She comes up behind Julian. She puts her hand on his elbow, her arm around his waist. She pulls him toward her and rests her head on his shoulder.

  “You’re better than most people,” she says. She kisses his neck. Her breath is warm and wine-sweet. “That’s what you don’t understand.”

  18

  The Other Brother

  MARIO WALKS UP AND DOWN Eighth Street, a bottle under his arm, talking to himself. Antonio watches from his bedroom window. He ducks behind the drapes each time his brother passes. It is eight-thirty at night, much too early for him to be home from the restaurant, and Antonio wonders if this means that the day and the hour have finally come for Mrs. Stella’s. The news may surprise the customers, but not anyone who has heard the neighborhood gossip the past few months.

  On the last day of September, Gino Stella drained the restaurant bank account and disappeared from Wilmington. With him went a year’s worth of profits, and any hope of Mario retrieving his share. The same day Gino skipped town, someone robbed his mother’s house on Sixth Street and tied the old woman to her bedpost. She hasn’t spoken since and refuses to give any hint of what might have happened to her son.

  After learning of all this, Mario visited Roberto Fante, who would soon expect the latest installment of protection money. Roberto said that he had nothing to do with Gino’s debts. “Every minute Gino Stella’s not at his restaurant,” Roberto told him, “He’s at the racetrack or some all-night poker game. They see him coming a mile away. Che peccato, what a shame, to see a hardworking man throw away his money.” He put his hand on Mario’s shoulder. “Tell you what: you’re a nice boy. I’ll give you one free month. By then, you’ll figure something out.”

  When the regulars asked why they hadn’t seen Gino or the adorable Mamma Stella in a while, Mario told them there’d been a death in their family, and they’d both gone back to the Old Country for the funeral. If Gino ever did reappear, Mario had a stack of condolence cards waiting for him.

  “Something happened,” Antonio says to Maddalena now. She sits in the rocking chair on the other side of the room, cradling Prima.

  “You should go down there,” she says.

  “If Mario’s in trouble,” Antonio says, “he’ll come to me.” He moves away from the window and changes into his pajamas. He pulls the quilt up his neck and settles in for whatever rest he can get. For now, at least, his days of wandering the neighborhood are over. Sleep—not a card game at the pizzeria, not girls like Cassie Donovan—is the adventure that’s now missing from his life. His daughter wakes up five times a night, every night, and though Maddalena always takes her immediately downstairs, Antonio can still hear her. Instead of cursing the girl, though, he lies alone on his side of the bed and thinks, Forgive me, Maddalena, but every time Prima wakes, I thank God; I say, don’t let her stop crying. It means she’s still alive.

  Just after Antonio switches off the lamp, there is a knock on the door.

  “É Mario,” he says. “Scusa il disturbo.”

  “Come in,” Antonio says, and there is his brother: red-faced, coat half-buttoned, shirt untucked, holding a full bottle of sambuca.

  “We can talk?” he asks. He holds up the bottle. “Mamma’s making espresso.”

  “I’m in bed,” Antonio says.

  “Did something happen?” Maddalena asks.

  “Yes,” Mario says. He steps inside. “Something good.”

  They wait, but Mario offers no details. He looks back and forth at them, then says, “It’s too complicated to explain in a few words.”

  “Then it can’t be that good,” says Antonio, stepping into his slippers.

  At the kitchen table, Mario tells Antonio what he already knows about Gino’s disappearance. The way he sees it now, Mario says, he and Gino have pulled even. Without Gino’s initial investment and contacts, Mrs. Stella’s could never have opened. But in the past year, Mario has worked day and night for no salary other than a percentage of the profits. Even if he counted the money Gino stole, they had contributed roughly the same amount. They owe each other nothing, and, as far as Mario is concerned, he’d be happy never to see the man’s face again, though he wishes him well. “God have mercy on his soul,” he says, just in case, and crosses himself.

  “Congratulations,” Antonio says. “You’re now the single owner. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d think you sent those goons after Gino yourself.” He laughs and sips his espresso, which is too weak and oversweetened.

  Mario finds this very funny, too, and reminds Antonio how much he misses talking like this, just the two of them, bullshitting, with no women or kids to interrupt. If the Grasso brothers don’t stick together, he says, they might as well rip out their
father’s heart with their bare hands. And what is the point of making money, of raising children, if they don’t share everything with each other?

  “How much closer can we get?” Antonio says. “Your wife sleeps ten feet from me.”

  Again Mario laughs very hard. He pours another espresso, but this time Antonio refuses the sambuca. He holds his hand over the cup and yawns.

  “You’re still waiting for the good news, aren’t you?” Mario said. “You’re thinking, did my brother really drag me out of bed to tell me he’s the new Gino Stella?”

  “Yes and no,” said Antonio. He has his suspicions of what is coming next but would never suggest it on his own. He wants to hear it in Mario’s own words.

  “We have an opportunity,” Mario begins, and tells him, with careful attention to his words, that he can’t run the restaurant by himself, not if it means adding the books and Roberto Fante to the hundred things he’s already responsible for. He has no stomach for it. The part-time cook, Settimio, knows only recipes, not business. And Papà—here Mario lowers his voice—Papà is too old for all the hours it will take. “And one other big thing,” he says. He folds his hands on the table. “Money.” He shrugs. “To keep it going, I need more money. To replace what Gino took, but also to—how can I say?—give it the Grasso stamp.”

  By the end of his speech, Mario has the disgraced Gino Stella on a ranch in Argentina and the young Grasso brothers rich co-owners—equal partners, of course—of the restaurant that will put Wilmington, Delaware, on the map. “Me and you, we’ll be famous up and down the East Coast,” he says, standing. He walks from one end of the kitchen to the other. “We’ll be an Italian American institution robust for generations to come.” In time, he says, they will break through the walls of the neighbors on Union Street, and gobble up the laundromats and bakeries and shoe repair shops like a hungry fish.

  As Mario talks on, dreaming bigger every minute, the bemused and skeptical expression on Antonio’s face changes to one of apprehension. He knows that when his brother finally stops, takes a breath, and asks him in no uncertain terms to invest his savings and his future in the restaurant, he will have no good reason to say no. He has enough money in the bank and in the drapes, with some to spare. Soon Maddalena will go back to the Golden Hem, and bring home the extra income they’ve come to rely on for security. Their house in New Castle will have to wait a few years anyway, since they’ll need Mamma to watch Prima during the day while Maddalena works, at least until she is old enough for school. The only reason for saying no that Antonio can give Mario—if he ever stops talking and asks his question—is that he is afraid. And at this moment, with the sambuca working its charms, and Mamma and Papà in their final years, and having lost a chance like this twice before with Renato, and, most of all, with his wife and daughter safe and healthy and rocking upstairs (he can hear the lovely creak of the chair through the ceiling, the murmur of Maddalena’s shy lullaby), it seems a great failure of heart to be afraid.