Across the Table

by Linda Cardillo

  The whole ride out to the VA hospital I rehearsed with Al Jr. His little legs dangled over the edge of the trolley seat and he swung them back and forth. I’d shined his shoes the night before and pressed his pants and shirt. He looked well-cared for, content. I smiled at how much he was starting to resemble Al as he lost his baby face. I wondered if Al would see himself in his son’s eyes.

  “Remember, sweetie, we’re going to see Daddy, the man in the picture. Just like Papa is my daddy, you have a daddy, too.”

  “Why doesn’t he live with us, like Papa does?”

  “Because he’s been fighting far away. But he got hurt and now he’s getting better so he can come home to us. But he misses you very much and wants to see you.”

  Al Jr. clung to my hand as we climbed the steps of the hospital, stealing glances along the hallway at bandaged men and briskly moving nurses. He squeezed my hand tighter. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. Too much for a little boy to take in. But Al wanted so much not only to see his son, but to hold him, feel the weight of him in his arms.

  At the end of the long hallway I bent down in front of the door to the solarium. I took Al Jr.’s face in my hands and kissed him. “Your daddy is waiting for you and he loves you very much. I’m going to be right here with you.”

  Al was looking out the window when I opened the door. He turned, smiled first at me, then moved his gaze down to his son. His hands gripped the arms of his wheelchair and he pushed himself up onto his feet.

  “Hello, son,” he whispered. His eyes filled up.

  Al Jr. grabbed my leg and hid behind me.

  “He’s not my daddy,” he mumbled into my thigh.

  A cloud moved over Al’s face. He heaved himself back into the wheelchair.

  I put my arm around Al Jr.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. He is your daddy. He just looks a little different from his picture. Remember the baby photo Aunt Patsy took of you the day you were born? You don’t look like that anymore, do you?”

  He shook his head, still keeping it hidden against me. “No. I’m growed up now.”

  “Right. And so is your daddy. He’s grown up now, too.”

  He peeked out from his hiding place.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Al. Just like yours. Can you say hi to him?”

  He shook his head again.

  I saw the disappointment in Al’s eyes. And the hunger.

  Give him time, I mouthed to Al.

  “Well, Mommy’s going to say hi, so you can stay here or come with me while I give him a kiss.”

  “Don’t go!”

  “I’m only going to Daddy. Not far.”

  I moved deliberately across the room to Al, but Al Jr. still clung to me, hiding behind me as I reached Al and leaned in to kiss him.

  “Hi,” I said, meeting his lips and lightly brushing his check, wet with tears.

  “He’s beautiful,” he murmured.

  “Like you,” I answered.

  “And stubborn.”

  “Also like you.” I smiled, trying to ease his hurt with a little ribbing.

  It was at that moment that Al Jr. let go of me and raced out the door.

  I pulled back from Al and felt him stiffen.

  “I have to go after him,” I said, as if I needed to explain.

  Then I followed Al Jr. down the hall, his legs pumping and his arms flailing as if he was running from a nightmare.

  And I felt as if I was in the middle of one.

  Stern nurses cast me disapproving looks as I chased after Al Jr., my high heels clicking against the linoleum. At the end of the hall an orderly saw him coming and scooped him up. He was sobbing and kicking by the time I got to him.

  I thanked the orderly, apologized for my son’s outburst with a very red face and took the tangle of beating arms and legs into my own arms.

  “We’re going outside, young man, while you calm down. Don’t you ever run away from me again!”

  I struggled between the words of a mother who wants to put the fear of God into a child to keep him safe and the words of a mother who understands her child’s confusion and anger. I never for even a second felt like running away from Al but, sure as hell, there were moments I wanted to run away from how hard it was to see him the way he was now.

  I took Al Jr. outside to a bench and held him on my lap until he stopped sobbing. I got out my handkerchief and wiped his face and made him blow his nose. I figured out I wasn’t going to be able to explain to a two-and-a-half-year-old that in time he’d get to know the strange man in the wheelchair and understand how much that man loved him. But I wasn’t above bribery and guilt.

  “Daddy’s feeling very sad because you ran away,” I said. “I think we need to go back up and say, ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Al Jr. shook his head vehemently. “No! I don’t want to go back.”

  “Well, if we go back and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ then we’d be able to stop at La Venezia on the way home and get a lemon ice.”

  When we returned to the solarium, Al was still there, thank God. I worried that he might have wheeled himself back to his room, and I couldn’t bring myself to take Al Jr. in there. But the solarium overlooked the bench where Al Jr. and I had been sitting, and Al had watched us the whole time.

  I carried our son into the room and sat on a chair with him on my lap, his head facing away from Al. I prompted him. “Al Jr. has something he wants to tell you.”

  It took him a few minutes, but the promise of a treat was enough to get the words out.

  “Sorry I runned away.”

  “Okay, son. But don’t ever do that again. Your mom and I want you to be safe. Hey. Now that you’re here, do you want to see some pictures of my ship?”

  Al pulled a small scrapbook out of the back of his chair and started turning the pages. At first, Al Jr. was wary, but his curiosity soon overcame his need to cling to me. He edged closer to Al and the photos—snapshots taken on the deck of his destroyer. But then he turned a page and Al Jr. recognized something.

  “That’s me!” He pointed to the photo Patsy had taken of the two of us the day he was born.

  “Your mom sent that to me and I’ve always had it with me, right here.” Al touched the pocket over his heart.

  “I have a picture of you,” Al Jr. said. “But you don’t look like in the picture.”

  Al and I exchanged glances over his head.

  “Pretty soon you won’t need a picture of me. I’ll be right there, home with you and your mom.”

  Homecoming

  AL CAME HOME at the beginning of May, just before VE Day. He was on crutches and hobbled up the steps to my parents’ apartment, his face as white as one of my aunt Carmella’s bleached sheets that hung out on the line every Monday. The sweat was pouring from his face as he slumped into a chair in the living room.

  I was glad we’d put off his welcome-home party until the following Sunday. I didn’t want the rest of the family to see him like this—to take pity on him. And I sensed that he didn’t want to be seen—by his brothers, his cousins—as less than the man who had left Boston so long ago. If I knew Al, it would only make him angry to have people feeling sorry for him.

  And he was angry enough already. At the hand the war had dealt him; at the pain; at the gaping hole that was his future. What was he going to do with his life now that he couldn’t build? Of course, he didn’t tell me these things. I had to figure it out myself, lying alone in the middle of the night.

  We didn’t have room in my bedroom for a double bed, and Al was still recuperating, so he slept on a hospital bed we’d rented and put in the living room, and I stayed with Al Jr. in the bedroom. I was at my wits’ end, longing for a moment alone with my husband. Not even to make love, mind you—I understood that was still months away. No, all I wanted was a blessed hour or two to eat a meal that I’d cooked and just the two of us ate, sitting across the table and talking to each other.

  But my mother did all the cooking, with me still
working at the bank—and thank God for that! Dinnertime was like a movie set for a Frank Capra extravaganza, with a cast of thousands. Al’s parents came at least once a week, resentful that we weren’t living with them, and we had to go to them on Sundays for dinner. Everybody wanted to see Al, wish him well, exult in the fact that he was alive.

  I couldn’t blame them. Just seeing him at the table in the kitchen reading the Herald when I came home from work was a comfort to me. A sign of normalcy.

  But it wasn’t enough. Not for me. And I knew that, soon, it wouldn’t be enough for Al, either. I understood that we weren’t going to have what we’d been blessed to experience on Trinidad at the beginning of our marriage. I’d accepted it. You can’t go backward in life, not after you get hit with something as big as World War II. And not after you have kids.

  But that doesn’t mean you give up on having a decent life. I knew if we stayed too long with my parents, with Al out of work and sleeping in the living room, we’d slip into a pattern that would be too hard to pull away from.

  That’s why, on my way home from work one summer evening, I stopped in my tracks as I was walking down Salem Street. My feet were killing me; the heat had made them swell up and my pumps were too tight. All I wanted to do was get home and out of those shoes and my suit. I was rushing. And then I saw the sign in the window of Nardone’s. It was a small pizza place on the corner of Salem and Stillman. They made a decent Neapolitan pizza and had a few basic dishes—meatballs, eggplant parmigiano—on the menu. I’d heard that old man Nardone had passed away in April.

  The sign that made me stop said For Sale.

  I stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes. The place was open and a few people were seated at tables. One of the things I’d learned in my time at the bank was the importance of location to a business, especially a business that served the public. I crossed the street and pretended to be looking into the Lu Ann dress shop, but I was actually watching the reflection in the shopwindow—watching the number of people walking past Nardone’s.

  Satisfied, I crossed back and pushed open the door to the restaurant. I sat down, ordered a cup of coffee and chatted with the waitress. I’d seen her now and then in the neighborhood. She’d been a few years ahead of me in high school, although I have to say she looked worn-out. Waitressing is the kind of job that can do that to you, on your feet all day, lifting heavy trays. Despite my too-tight pumps, I was grateful I’d had the training and the skills to get my job at the bank.

  “Hey, Milly, I saw the sign in the window. How come the Nardones are selling the place?” I stirred my coffee as if I was just making idle conversation, not seriously interested.

  “Anthony’s convinced his mother to go to Miami with him. He wants to ‘start a new life’ and none of the other brothers care about the restaurant. He’s champing at the bit to get outta Boston, but far as I know, nobody’s biting. All I care is that whoever buys the place keeps me on. Hey, I hear Al’s back. How’s he doing? My brother was asking about him. Tell him Sonny said hi.”

  “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

  When I got up, I left her a nice tip. She smiled and waved at me through the window when she went to clear the table.

  The next day on my lunch hour I did some research on restaurant sales in the city. Not much was moving, since so many places got passed down to the next generation. I didn’t know much about running a restaurant, but I knew food. I hadn’t known anything about banking, either, when I’d started three years ago, and I’d learned fast enough. That night after I got Al Jr. settled in bed and Al was listening to the Red Sox game out on the stoop with his cousin, I sat down at the dining room table with my savings account book and my ledger. Al and I probably couldn’t buy Nardone’s on our own, but if my parents took a share and the bank was willing to give us a loan, we might be able to make an offer. I knew the Nardones owned the building, not just the restaurant, and there were three apartments above it. That meant Al and I could have a home of our own again, and we’d have the rent from the other apartments to help pay off the loan.

  I went to bed with a sense of hope that night for the first time since Al had been wounded. I was pretty sure I could talk my boss into the loan—provided I promised to keep working for him and assured him I’d be handling the business end of the restaurant. And I was equally sure Mama and Papa would be willing to invest in and work at the restaurant. It was Al I needed to convince, Al I needed to inoculate with my hope.

  I thought back to our early days, especially in our cottage at Chaguaramas, when we’d had nothing under that tin roof except each other, and I knew that, somehow, I had to find our way back there.

  To get there, I lied.

  I lied first to my boss. “I need to take Wednesday off, Mr. Coffin. An appointment for my husband’s treatment, and I have to accompany him.”

  Next, I lied to Al. “I got a call from the hospital. They’ve scheduled a checkup for you, but not at the VA. They gave me an address in Marblehead.”

  “Marblehead? How’m I supposed to get there with these?” He waved his crutches at me. He was getting pretty good at using them as extensions of his emotions, but not so great at moving around with them.

  “There’s a bus that runs up 1A. I checked. And I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t have to babysit me. What about your job?”

  “I’m supposed to go with you. I think it’s about some new treatment, and they want to teach me how to do it, be part of your recovery.”

  The thing is, I didn’t feel I was lying with the words I was saying. I believed that the reason I was taking Al to Marblehead was going to help him recover.

  I even lied to Mama.

  “I’m not going to work on Wednesday, Mama, but I still need you to watch Al Jr. I can’t take him with us to this appointment. It’s too much for me with Al still on crutches.”

  The night before, I stayed up cooking. I made Al’s favorite foods, not just Calabrese dishes, but one of the island specialties I’d learned to cook on Trinidad, fried bananas in a sweet rum sauce. I packed everything in a picnic basket the next morning and tucked our bathing suits and beach towels underneath the food. And I wore one of the sundresses I’d made that first year on Trinidad. It still fit, I’m pleased to say.

  “You going to the doctor dressed like that?” my mother asked.

  Mama let nothing escape her.

  “It’s a long bus ride, Mama, and it’s hot. I’ve got a shawl to put over my shoulders when we get there.”

  “I think she looks great, Mama. The doctor will be jealous.” Al was standing in the doorway. The look of appreciation on his face was the first spark of life I’d seen since he’d come home.

  I twirled around in front of him, letting him catch a whiff of my perfume.

  “You smell like you did on the island,” he murmured.

  I wanted to pull him into my bedroom right then and there. But with Mama standing in the kitchen, hands on her hips, and Al Jr. dawdling with his farina at the breakfast table, I knew that was a surefire way to extinguish the longing I’d just heard in Al’s voice.

  One step at a time, I told myself.

  “Let’s get going. We don’t want to miss the bus.” I grabbed the basket and brushed Al’s hand to follow me.

  I’d given us plenty of time to get to Haymarket Square and the bus stop. I didn’t want Al to exhaust himself before we’d even started the trip. Our route took us past Nardone’s. The For Sale sign was still in the window, but I didn’t do anything as obvious as point it out.

  Al was wearing his uniform, and everyone we passed made mention of it.

  “Welcome home, son.”

  “God bless you.”

  “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

  I could see that Al was embarrassed by the attention.

  “It’s just their way of showing appreciation.” I smiled at him, proud to be at his side.

  “Yeah, but so many guys were braver than I was, and they’re not here anymore.
”

  “But your being alive doesn’t make their sacrifice—or yours—any less.” I stroked the side of his cheek.

  “I know. But it’s hard for me to believe that.”

  I fought the tears that were welling up in my eyes. I didn’t want Al to think the conversation was upsetting me when, in fact, it was exactly what I’d wished for. Just the two of us, talking about things that were important.

  We got on the bus and found seats near the front. Al stowed his crutches and the picnic basket in the rack above us and settled stiffly into the aisle seat with his leg stretched out. I saw the by-now familiar wince cross his face and heard the sharp intake of breath that was the only signal he allowed himself to indicate that he was in pain.

  He would never have ventured this far, or been willing to risk the pain, if I’d told him where we were going. He would have refused and locked himself back in his empty silence in the living room.

  But the twinge appeared to be fleeting this time, which I think surprised him. His face relaxed and I shifted my weight so that my thigh was pressed against his good leg through the thin yellow cotton of my dress. It was the closest we’d been physically since he’d returned, except when I was taking care of him, which didn’t really count.

  Little droplets of sweat were forming on my upper lip and also dripping down under my arms. I wasn’t sure if it was the heat or my own nervousness. If I’d wanted to recreate the atmosphere on Trinidad, I’d gotten off to a good start. It was always hot there, and anytime Al and I had been close our bodies were slick with sweat.

  Al reached up and wiped the sweat from my lip with his thumb.

  “So where are we really going, Rose? Your mother was right. This dress is no outfit to wear to a VA doctor’s office. I’d have to fight guys off with my crutches the minute anybody got a look at you!”