Across the Table

by Linda Cardillo

  AL JR. GRADUATED from Villanova with honors in June of 1965. We retraced the journey we’d made four years earlier, this time with Mike, Toni and Papa along. After Mama’s funeral, my brothers and sisters and I had realized that leaving Papa to live alone wasn’t a good idea. He was eighty years old and had worked hard all his life shaping rough stone from Vermont quarries into the polished granite blocks of Boston’s churches and banks and office buildings. But he could barely boil an egg and had probably never turned on the washing machine. More than his unfamiliarity with housework was our fear that he’d slide into a depression so deep he wouldn’t come back out. As it was, he’d barely spoken or eaten since the morning of Mama’s death.

  I’d like to tell you I was the noble one in the family discussion, immediately offering to take him into my home. After all, I lived just down the street, and Mama had been working at the restaurant with us for twenty years. But I didn’t. I held back. It’s not that we didn’t have the room. With Al Jr. about to go into the navy and Mike heading off to Holy Cross in September, we could’ve easily taken Papa in. But a piece of me selfishly thought it was time for Al and me to have a break—from responsibility and worry. But that wasn’t going to happen. My brothers and sisters elected me, for all the right reasons, and I didn’t argue.

  We moved Papa in during the two weeks we would normally have gone to Florida. I fixed up a back room in the apartment for him with his favorite chair and his own TV. It was on the quiet side of the building, away from the bustle of Salem Street.

  I made sure he got out to his social club, the St. Anthony Society, to play cards twice a week. In the evenings, sometimes, he’d sit downstairs at the bar in the restaurant. One night, when we were really busy, I asked him to pour a few drinks. He got behind the bar and surprised me. Despite his grumbling that nobody knew how to make a good Bellini, it was the first time since Mama died that he’d done anything with enthusiasm. It may have been the women waiting for their table who were enjoying his gusto in putting the cocktails together. He was good enough with his fractured English banter to get them to order a second round.

  The next evening, I saw him put on a clean shirt and shave before he came downstairs.

  “You want some help at the bar tonight?” he said to me after he finished his pasta fazool.

  “Sure, Papa. That would be a big help.”

  By the time we all drove down to Pennsylvania for Al Jr.’s graduation, Papa was getting up in the morning like a man with a purpose. He even had a group of regulars who came in every evening to debate the latest news in Il Progresso and have a glass of grappa after their dish of spaghetti.

  The graduation at Villanova was interesting. I didn’t want us to look like a group of cavonne coming down from the tenements to the ritzy Philadelphia Main Line. I’d seen both The Philadelphia Story and High Society, so I knew what we might find here. I was no Grace Kelly, but I know how to shop to look classy. I put my hair in a French twist, wore the rose-colored mock Chanel suit I’d found at Filene’s Basement and a double strand of cultured pearls. I made both Al and Mike get new suits, to much grumbling. Toni was more difficult to outfit. At fifteen, she was beautiful but not in a conventional way, so she didn’t see it yet. I prayed that someday she’d come to recognize how attractive she was, but at that moment it was all I could do to keep myself from marching her in front of a mirror and yelling, “Look at yourself! You’re gorgeous!”

  But we were at that stage in the mother-daughter dance when nothing I said was considered worthy of attention. I still bought her clothes, however, and I combed through the junior sections in both Filene’s and Jordan Marsh to find her something she’d wear without making all of us suffer because she hated it or thought it made her look ugly. I settled on an adorable yellow pique sheath with a bolero jacket that had daisy buttons. When she put it on, she could’ve been one of those High Society wedding guests. “Okay,” she muttered, examining herself from side to side in the mirror. “Can I get yellow heels to go with it?”

  So there we were that morning in Villanova, PA, trying not to look or sound like the urban version of The Beverly Hillbillies. I adjusted Mike’s tie and, as we got out of the car, tucked a stray curl of Toni’s hair—as black as Al’s—behind her ear. She wore the tiny gold studs I’d finally allowed her to pierce her ears with. I smoothed Al’s collar and kissed him on the lips.

  “Big day,” I said.

  “You look like Elizabeth Taylor,” he said.

  “I was trying for Jackie Kennedy.”

  “You’re much prettier. And you’ve got a better ass.”

  I didn’t like him to talk like that in front of the kids, but they were ahead of us, and I shot him a look of mock disapproval mixed with appreciation. I was forty-four, with a teenage daughter who was driving me crazy and two sons stepping into new stages of their lives.

  Every time one of my kids passed a milestone—first day of school, first communion, confirmation, graduation—it was like giving birth all over again. I felt as though life was changing for me, too. When this day is over, I thought to myself, I’ll be the mother of a college graduate and a navy ensign. How did I get here so fast? One minute I’m sewing myself maternity clothes and the next I’m sitting on a folding chair in the sun, watching a tall, handsome young man march past. I was on the aisle. As he moved by me, he squeezed me on the shoulder. Just like Al. Letting me know it was going to be all right.

  When we got back to Boston, we held a family party for him at the restaurant. It was a big deal, a college graduate in the North End. Most of his buddies from St. John’s were working in the trades. Some of them were no doubt as smart as Al Jr., but nobody had expected as much from them as I had from him. I didn’t regret for a minute that I pushed him hard. I’d always had ambitions. Seeing to it that my kids got educated was one of them.

  What a party! We received permission from the city to use the vacant lot behind the building. We strung Christmas lights and hired a band to play live music. Al’s cousin welded some oil drums together and made us big grills to cook the sausage and peppers. We had all of Al Jr.’s favorite foods—lasagne, eggplant parm, sfogliatelle, even big tubs of lemon ice from Mike’s Pastry Shop. You’d have thought it was one of the feast days, except there was no Madonna on a wagon draped with ribbons pinned with dollar bills.

  The kids danced. My aunts sat on their plastic beach chairs, fanning themselves and pinching Al Jr.’s cheeks as if he were still a little boy. Papa and my uncles sat at a back table playing pinochle.

  “Come sei buono!” How good you are!

  “God bless.”

  My friend Patsy came over and put her arm around me. “You did a good job. I remember the day he was born, and you scared to death about raising him alone. Be proud of him, but be proud of yourself, too.”

  We toasted him many times and teased him about running for mayor, finally giving us an Italian in the new city hall just on the other side of the expressway. He laughed, but I could tell it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea to him. It was 2:00 a.m. before we doused the lights and folded up the tables and chairs.

  And then he was gone.

  He took the train to Virginia, where he trained as a medic. By October he was in Vietnam. I never questioned for a minute that he should do his duty. But sending a son to war was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

  Because he’d joined ROTC at Villanova, Al Jr. had volunteered, not been drafted. It was still early in the draft, so not too many boys from the North End had been called up yet, although they would be soon enough, especially since so few of them were in college. There were no other women to share my fears with—in the family or in the neighborhood—facing the day as I did every morning, turning on the Today Show the minute I got out of bed, watching Walter Cronkite every evening as I cooked in the restaurant.

  “You’re making yourself crazy, listening to this garbage every day, Rose,” Al said to me one night, flicking off the TV as a draft dodger burned his draft card in front
of a courthouse.

  “I need the news, Al. I need to see what he’s seeing.”

  “He’s on an aircraft carrier, Rose. He sees planes taking off and landing. And when someone in one of those planes comes off on a stretcher, he’s ready with an IV and bandages. He’s going to be fine, Rose.”

  Al and I each found separate ways to get through the day. Al’s was to believe that Vietnam wasn’t the navy’s war, and that Al Jr. wasn’t reliving his father’s nightmare of twenty years before. But every now and then he’d come up against the war in unexpected places, despite his deliberate refusal to watch the evening news.

  One afternoon he ran over to Haymarket when we were short on our order of broccoli rabe. He knew a couple of guys with stalls who were willing to give him a wholesale price.

  An antiwar rally was going on in City Hall Plaza, a shallow sloping bowl of paved brick built to mimic Siena’s Piazza del Campo. Two of Al’s cousins were masons who had worked on it.

  Al could hear the loudspeakers and the chants of the crowd and wandered over to the fringes with his shopping bags full of greens. What he saw and heard disgusted him.

  “Goddamn freaks,” he said as he slammed the bags on the stainless-steel counter in the kitchen. “Bunch of unwashed cowards. And the police just stood on the sidelines, letting them rant and rave!”

  “This is America, Pop. They’re allowed to rant and rave.” Mike was helping out on a weekend home from Holy Cross.

  “Is that what your Jesuits are teaching you? What about your brother, fighting so these morons can spout their disrespectful drivel.”

  “He’d be the first to tell you they’ve got the right.”

  “Are you turning into one of these antiwar nuts?”

  Mike shut up. There was no point arguing with Al when he was so single-minded.

  I don’t know how I would’ve felt if I’d been face-to-face with the protesters as Al had been. If they were dishonoring my son and his sacrifice, I’d probably have slapped them across their mouths. It was one thing to question whether the government had made the wrong decision, but another to blame the young men laying down their lives.

  It had been so different when Al and I were young. The country was united. We knew we were doing the right thing. A family had been proud to hang a blue star in the window when they had a son in the service.

  Nowadays there were no stars. Maybe people were afraid their windows would be broken. I felt lonely as the mother of a serviceman. Al poured his concern for Al Jr. into anger at the war protesters. I had no comfort there—not from Al and not from my own mixed feelings.

  Thanksgiving 1965 was a quiet one, our first without Mama, of course, but Al Jr. was eating his turkey on a ship in the South Vietnam Sea. I’d sent a package of canned goods—anchovies, roasted peppers, marinated mushrooms and olives—and I double-baked the peppery hard biscuits Papa liked to dip in his wine. I figured they’d keep in transit. I put in hard salami and a round of provolone coated with wax. It wasn’t lasagne or fresh mozzarella and bruschetta, but I knew he’d appreciate the taste of home. We got a letter just before the holidays and I read parts of it out loud at dinner so everyone could hear his voice coming through in that smart way he had with words.

  “Give everyone around the table my love and remind them how good life is. The guys in my battalion, when I describe our Thanksgiving to them, can’t believe what goes into it. I’ll be thinking of you all. I’ll imagine the aroma of the turkey wafting up the stairs; the lasagne bubbling as it comes out of the oven; the artistry of the antipasto platter that I’m sure Toni has arranged so the colors are as vivid as the taste; Mom bursting with pride when everything’s finally on the table; Dad standing like a samurai with his carving knife ready to slice. I miss you all. God bless.”

  We didn’t know that he’d been transferred from the carrier to a river operation. The navy had started building up its inland forces with small boat patrols. But the nightly news wasn’t carrying stories about them. Like Al, I began to be lulled by the thought that since he wasn’t a pilot and wasn’t in the infantry, he was safer than most. But we were mistaken.

  When the two navy officers walked into the restaurant one night in April, I assumed they were customers. Toni offered to seat them, and then I saw the puzzled look on her face. She came to the kitchen door. “Mom, Daddy, the captain is asking for you.” Al took off his chef’s cap and wiped his hands. We exchanged a look and he grasped my hand as we went out to them.

  “Is there a private place we can speak with you?” They glanced around at the busy dining room. People were starting to notice them. I was beginning to shake. Al had the presence of mind to lead them to the office. I heard a glass break in the stillness that had descended on the usually hectic kitchen.

  Al closed the door and held me as we listened to the report of our son’s death, the medal he would receive posthumously, the date we could expect the plane carrying his body home.

  A pain pierced my heart at that moment, leaving a hole that has never been filled.

  I lost two children that night and I almost lost Al. Toni, reeling from a world gone suddenly and horribly wrong, needed a mother who could be a refuge and a role model. Someone who could show her how to put one foot in front of the other even when she didn’t know where she was headed or why.

  But I failed her. The tension between us that had been simmering in her early teens exploded after Al Jr. died. She was sixteen and we could barely speak to each other without yelling and tears. She pulled away from me, one small step after another, and in my own grief I didn’t realize that until it was too late.

  I felt I was the last person in the world she wanted to be like. I was someone to be ashamed of, someone who couldn’t possibly understand her.

  She’d always been artistic as a kid. She’d keep busy for hours in the restaurant during the early days, as long as you gave her a stack of paper and some crayons. You’d think she’d been given a pot of gold the day she got a box of 96 Crayolas.

  Before the funeral she grabbed the photo albums I’d been keeping for each of the kids and picked out several pictures of Al Jr. She spent hours alone in her room listening to Joan Baez.

  I didn’t make her go to school that week. I could hardly get out of bed myself. Cookie made sure we had food in the kitchen, but who could eat?

  One night, Al peeked in Toni’s room after she’d fallen asleep. Taped all around the walls were big sheets of black paper with pastel portraits of her brother—as a little boy, a teenager, a navy officer. The last one was sketched from a photo taken the night of his graduation party. She’d captured each moment with excruciating accuracy.

  Al made me get out of bed to see what she’d done. Her fingertips were smudged with the colored chalk, and the dark circles under her eyes looked as if she’d drawn them herself. What she’d created was as much a shrine as Mama’s painting of St. Anthony that she’d kept on her dresser with a flickering red votive candle.

  I sat on the floor for a couple of hours, surrounded by the images, rocking myself and crying silently. I didn’t want to wake Toni. I crept out around midnight.

  Al coaxed Toni into letting us frame the sketches and hang them at the wake. He’d explained to her that we wouldn’t have an open casket like we did for Mama. Those drawings brought people to a standstill, like they were at St. Peter’s in Rome in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

  Throughout the wake Toni sat in one of Severino’s wing chairs in a black suit that looked too old for her. I hadn’t wanted her to wear black at Mama’s funeral and I couldn’t bring myself to shop with her for this one. Patsy had taken her downtown and let her pick out something at Ann Taylor. She looked like a career girl, not my baby, but I kept my mouth shut for a change. Not out of common sense or understanding that my daughter was growing up, especially after a tragedy like Al Jr.’s death. I was just too locked inside my own pain to care.

  And maybe that’s what happened to Toni and me. She thought I didn’t care abou
t what she did or who she was anymore, so she stopped trying to tell me.

  Somehow we got through the funeral. St. Leonard’s was full to overflowing. Family, Al Jr.’s classmates from BC High and Villanova, friends of Mike’s and Toni’s, people from the neighborhood. Al Jr. was the first boy from the North End to be killed in Vietnam, so even the politicians showed up. Marianne, the girl Al Jr. had brought to Thanksgiving dinner in 1964, had driven from New Jersey. She’d sat with me at the wake for a while the night before, both of us in silence. There was nothing we could say to each other, but she held my hand—the hand that should have blessed them on their wedding day and held their babies.

  I thought I’d already emptied myself of tears, but I cried through the whole Mass. At the cemetery, when the young navy officer handed me the flag that had been draped over Al Jr.’s coffin, I hugged it like an infant.

  This isn’t supposed to happen, that a child goes before a parent. It’s unnatural. We are left not knowing how to go on.

  Al and I faced our son’s death in totally different ways. Al was still angry, but he turned his anger into activity. He started renovating the restaurant, throwing himself into a marathon every day so he wouldn’t have time to think about his lost son. And me, I thought about A.J. constantly and stopped living. I sat at the kitchen table in the mornings after Toni had gone to school and didn’t move, my coffee grown cold in its cup, the plain toast I thought I could stomach lying uneaten and dried out on my plate.

  At noontime Papa would come in and ask, “Where’s lunch?” and I’d make him some peppers and eggs or open up a can of Progresso soup. Al grabbed himself some cheese and prosciutto in the restaurant kitchen and didn’t bother coming upstairs.

  After I fed Papa, I went to bed. I was usually sleeping when Toni got home from school. She did her homework and went downstairs to wait tables for the supper crowd. Al let me disappear like that for a couple of weeks. He crawled into bed around 1:00 a.m. and fell asleep from exhaustion. And because I’d been sleeping all day, that’s when I woke up. I tried to stay in bed with him, but I tossed and turned and eventually gave up. I wandered around the apartment. Sometimes I sat in the bedroom Al Jr. and Mike had shared, still full of books and sports equipment and LP albums. I smoothed the bedspread. I opened the closet and tried to breathe in the scent of my boy, but like a good housewife, I’d hung mothballs to protect the unused coats and jackets that he’d hung there before he left.