“Rose, you need to see a doctor,” Al said to me one morning. “You can’t continue like this. We can’t continue like this.”
But the doctor didn’t solve my problem. He gave me Valium, which numbed the pain and let me get some sleep at night, but made me care even less about everything falling apart around me.
Al was spending too much money on fixing up the restaurant at a time when business in the neighborhood was turning bad. We’d managed to weather the ups and downs over the years because I’d watched our costs, and kept our waste to a minimum. Like Mama, I’d learned to make do in times of scarcity and put by in times of abundance. But now I just wasn’t there. Al wasn’t paying attention to that part of the business because he’d never had to. The financial end of things had always been my responsibility. At the same time, Toni was hiding in her room whenever she was in the apartment. She didn’t seem to have any friends. She was a bookworm, like Al Jr., and when she wasn’t reading she was drawing. I was relieved, frankly, that she didn’t have a boyfriend at sixteen, as I had when I started dating Al. She was going to Sacred Heart, an all-girl Catholic school, so she didn’t have much opportunity to get herself involved. God only knows what might have happened if there’d been boys around. We had nieces on both sides of the family who’d gotten pregnant as teenagers. Oh, the boys married them, but what a way to begin a life together.
One night Al came upstairs with mail that had accumulated in the mailbox. I was so out of it I wasn’t going downstairs more than once or twice a week.
“When’s the last time you paid the bills or did the books?” he demanded, slamming a pile of overdue notices on the dining room table.
I looked at him blankly.
“Rose, wake up! You can’t keep living like this, ignoring everything around you. Including me. Don’t you care anymore?”
How do you say to the man who’s been by your side for almost thirty years, who’d overcome incredible pain and survived, who adored you, that you didn’t care about anything? I was speechless. The pills made me so weepy that all I could do was cry.
Al stomped into the bedroom and grabbed the pill bottle off the dresser, then pulled me into the bathroom.
“I want you to watch.” And he dumped every last pill down the toilet. “I’m calling the drugstore and the doctor and telling them not to renew your prescription.”
I was scared and horrified. I didn’t think I could face what I knew was coming if I didn’t have the Valium to take away the pain.
“We need you, Rose. All of us, but especially me. You’re the life of this family, and without you we’re dying, just as surely as Al Jr. died.
“Take care of yourself, Rose. Take care of us. And pay the damned bills!”
He went back downstairs, where he’d been spending most of his time.
I fought the urge to find something to replace the pills—a glass of Scotch on the rocks, anything. I looked in the bathroom mirror. I was a mess. My hair was like a rat’s nest, pulled back with a rubber band. My skin was rough and without any makeup. My neck was dirty. I didn’t recognize myself.
I turned on the shower, hoping to drown my tears and wash away the scum I felt had accumulated all over me. I scrubbed and scrubbed. When I finished, I spent half an hour combing the tangles out of my hair. I filed my nails, which were chipped. I put on a clean pair of slacks and a blouse. I admitted there might be some wisdom in the busywork of my mother’s generation. If you kept moving, working, you might not have time to feel the pain.
So I cleaned the house, starting with the bathroom. I pulled down curtains, gathered up the throw rug and the toilet seat cover and got everything in the washing machine. I dusted and polished and vacuumed. When I reached the dining room I saw the pile of bills and remembered.
I put away my dust rags and mop. I found my checkbook and sat down. I was overwhelmed by what I saw—charges for work I had no idea was going on; prices from our suppliers that I didn’t remember negotiating; orders for items that were well beyond what the receipts showed we needed.
I sorted through everything, trying to decide what to pay first, what to question Al about. When I added it all up, my stomach was churning. For the first time since Al Jr.’s death, I was feeling something other than emptiness. I was angry, and I was staring at our survival—as a business, as a family.
It was past midnight when I finished organizing everything and knew exactly how much we owed and how much we didn’t have. I’d made a list of what I had to do in the morning—who I had to call, orders I needed to reduce, a loan I’d try to arrange to get us back on our feet. I had to put the fire out before I could figure out how to rebuild what was so clearly falling apart.
I was furious with Al, of course, for throwing away money we didn’t have. But I was more furious with myself for throwing away what I’d worked so hard for.
When he came upstairs, it was with the usual expectations—a wife somewhere in la-la land, dirty dishes in the sink, a daughter hiding from us. At least I was able to surprise him on the first two counts. He saw that both the house and I were clean. He saw the neat stack of stamped envelopes on the counter. He saw the old Rose in my eyes—not the dull and clouded haze of indifference.
“It’s bad, Al. We’ve got a lot to talk about in the morning. But I’m back.”
After a couple of yelling matches—of the “How could you do that?” variety—over the next few weeks, we settled into a partnership that we knew would be our only chance of survival.
We were lucky to be heading into summer. The tourist business picks up, and even though we’re not on Hanover Street, we get enough foot traffic to pull people in. But we needed more than a steady stream of customers to stay afloat. I canceled some of the work Al had scheduled for the renovations and I took a hard look at the menu, what people were ordering and what it was costing us to prepare some of those dishes. It was one thing to offer regional specialties that we’d grown up with, but did we have to put everything on the menu? I cut back on the variety. And I returned to work in the kitchen so I could keep an eye on the little things, like how much food they were putting on the plate, only to scrape it into the garbage later.
I even managed to get us a loan. Somehow we made it through that year. Our economic survival was paramount, but I also hoped that my renewed energy sent a subtle message to Toni. She never commented on the change, but it was enough for me if she absorbed the lesson that change was possible.
It wasn’t easy. I didn’t crawl back into my bed, afraid that everything I’d worked for would be gone when I woke up. That fear overshadowed my grief. In that way, I became more like Al, driving everything I was feeling into work.
ROSE
1969
Emanuel
BY THE WINTER of 1968 we’d turned a corner. We were paying the bills, the dining room was full and we were no longer in the red. Although Al was head chef, I continued to have a hand in the cooking and experimented with dishes I thought we could add to the menu. Business had improved enough for us to add staff that year, as well. In addition to family, we still had Milly, who’d been waitressing for us for more than twenty years. One of the Agostino boys, who lived in the apartment above ours, bussed tables and washed dishes. Over time, we’d had waitstaff come and go. I had high expectations for the people I hired; some of them worked hard to meet my standards and others couldn’t be bothered, so I showed them the door.
At Christmas, Al put four plane tickets to Miami under the tree and right after New Year’s we took Mike and Toni to the Fontainebleau. It was Toni’s last year of high school; Mike had one more year at Holy Cross. Because he was the only surviving son he wasn’t going to lose his deferment after he graduated from college if, God forbid, the war was still on.
I hadn’t realized how much in his brother’s shadow Mike had felt. I’d never had much interest in child psychology books—written by men who had no kids, if you asked me. I let my kids know how much I loved them, I came down on them hard when they mess
ed up and I always forgave them. I also made sure I knew where they were, who they were with and what they liked to eat. They understood that when they felt lousy they could come into Mom’s kitchen and get filled up—with attention, with linguine and white clam sauce, torta Milanese, zabaglione…whatever they wanted. I’ll admit I found it easier with the boys than with Toni.
It was good to take time off with the kids. Toni spent her days at the pool in a two-piece bathing suit slathering herself with baby oil and burying her face in a book. She’d never had a steady boyfriend—or even many dates—and I had mixed feelings about that. I didn’t have to worry the way some mothers did about their daughters, but I also regretted that she hadn’t had someone special in these past few years of so much loss. I worried, too, that she’d be going off to college with so little experience of men. She was almost too naive. I didn’t think she’d even been kissed. Who knew? Maybe she was going to be a nun. I wasn’t crazy about that idea; in my opinion, you give up too much as a woman—the love of a man, children, a home. She wanted to go to art school. Mother Bede, the art teacher at Sacred Heart, had allowed her free rein in the studio and she’d produced a mighty portfolio that she’d carted around to art schools in Providence and Boston and Portland, Maine. Two people in her life were not happy with her choices: Mother Bede, who wanted her to go to Catholic schools, and Al, who didn’t want her to go to art school at all.
“What kind of work can you get with an art degree?” he demanded. “Are you going to wind up decorating store windows at Filene’s? Why can’t you go to school for nursing or teaching or accounting? Something practical.”
Al finally relented when she pointed out that she could always teach art when she finished. All her applications were done by the time we got to Florida, so I expected her to relax and enjoy herself.
“I am enjoying myself, Mom,” she insisted when I told her she didn’t seem to be having a good time, stuck on a chaise lounge while the other young people at the hotel had found one another.
“They’re jerks. I’d rather read my book.”
So I kept my mouth shut. We’d gone shopping a couple of times, but I couldn’t interest her in a haircut or a manicure when I went to the salon. She said she didn’t want “old lady” hair. She’d grown hers long and wore it parted in the middle like all the folk singers whose albums she collected. I thought the hairstyle didn’t flatter her at all—it made her nose look big. But I could tell her that until I was blue in the face and she’d still wear it that way. What did I know?
“Relax and let her be, Rose.” Al didn’t get caught up in the struggle. But at least a few times I was able to shrug it off and leave her at the pool. She was almost eighteen, not much younger than I’d been when I married Al. I had to believe she’d figure out what she wanted, even if it was just a quiet afternoon reading a book and getting a tan.
Mike, on the other hand, was out from morning till night with a group of college kids he’d met on the beach. He made it to dinner with us every evening because we insisted, but then he was off to the clubs. He was a little reckless, that one, not the solid citizen of his older brother or the bookworm, dreamy artist of his sister. But I couldn’t complain. They were both good kids and they were all I had.
So that vacation was as much of a family trip as you could expect with two nearly grown children. Until it became something else entirely.
Before we’d left Boston, Al had gotten a letter from an old friend of his from the neighborhood, Dominic Morelli. They’d gone to St. John’s together as boys, but after high school, when Al went into the navy, Dom had entered the seminary and become a priest. We’d lost touch with him when his order, the Franciscans, sent him to Delaware. But the letter came from Florida. Father Dom was working with Cuban refugees at a parish in Miami’s Little Havana. He asked Al to give him a call when we were down so they could get together, but Al let it slip.
Al played cards most afternoons in one of the lounges. When the game was over, the waiter who’d been serving the drinks stopped him.
“Mr. Dante?” Al had signed the check, so the waiter was aware of his name. He was Cuban, one of the refugees who’d come over in the December 1965 airlift, he told Al. And he knew Father Dom.
“Father Dom said to tell you there’s something you should know,” he said. “Someone you should meet.”
Al didn’t want to listen to him. But he called Dom that night and asked him what it was all about.
“Let’s have breakfast tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
The next day, Dom joined Al and me on the patio around ten. Thank God the kids were sleeping late.
He wasn’t alone. Antonio, the waiter, was with him, and a boy about thirteen.
“I want you to meet Emanuel,” Dom said.
And we looked into the dark, somber eyes of a boy who could’ve been Al Jr. or Al at that age.
It took my breath away.
I watched Al struggle with himself, ready to leap up from the table and run away from the past—or reach out and touch it.
“Shall we take a walk?” I said. I didn’t want this played out in front of strangers.
We went down to the beach, the five of us.
“Antonio and Manny are cousins,” Dom went on. “Manny’s mother died of emphysema when he was ten. Before she died, she told Antonio about Manny’s father and she gave him his name and this photograph.” He handed Al a faded Koda-chrome that looked like it had been handled many times. It was one of those pictures nightclub camera girls used to take. Al, tanned and handsome in his white dinner jacket, with his arm around a honeyed blonde in an orange chiffon dress.
Al turned to me.
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you.”
Antonio nodded vigorously. “My aunt never told Mr. Dante. She never saw him again. She wanted me to get Manny to America. When she got so sick, she made me promise to get Manny out of Cuba and find you.”
“One evening when I was shooting hoops with the kids,” Dom interjected, “I mentioned how I’d played on an asphalt court in my neighborhood in Boston. Antonio heard the word Boston and remembered what little his aunt knew about Manny’s father. He brought the photograph to me. That’s when I wrote you the letter, Al. I had to tell you in person, not long-distance.”
All this time Manny stood on the edge of the conversation, saying nothing but not taking his eyes off Al. He was a skinny little thing, not yet grown into his body. I wasn’t sure he understood English or, if he did, whether he knew what his sudden presence in Al’s life meant for Al—and for me.
I could only imagine what was going through Al’s mind. But after the initial shock and disbelief—how could this be? I asked myself—something happened to me that I can’t really explain.
Al and I had managed to lock up the whole Cuban episode in some hidden place in our hearts years ago. We never spoke of it after that painful winter, and I never threw it in his face when we fought. The jagged tear in our marriage that his affair with the Cuban had caused had been stitched back together over the years. Sure, if you ran your fingers over it you could tell it was a repair job. But like the fine, tight stitches of Mama’s darning, it had held, maybe even more strongly than before.
Until that day on the beach. When I saw the photograph of her and Al, that wound just split wide-open. I didn’t think I could bear the evidence that he had loved someone else. But that moment, when I felt as if my insides were spilling into the ocean swirling around my feet, I looked into the eyes of that boy—hungry, haunted—and knew what I had to do.
“What is it you want?” Al was asking Antonio, like he was negotiating with a union steward to prevent a strike. “Money?”
“He doesn’t want money,” I said to Al. “He wants a father. He needs a father.”
“How am I going to do that?” Al glanced from me to Manny.
“I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure it out. Dom, Al and I need to talk about this. We’d like to take you out
to dinner tonight. Can you meet us back at the hotel at six?”
Antonio seemed reluctant to let us go now that he’d found Al. I wondered how long he’d been looking for him.
“Don’t worry, we won’t disappear.” I dug into the straw bag I’d taken with me and pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper.
“Here. This is our restaurant in Boston, so you’ll always know where to find us. And Father Dom knows our address, too. But we’ll be here tonight. Okay?”
That seemed to calm him down. He nodded and shook Al’s hand. Manny put his hand out, as well, and Al pulled him close with a hug. When he released him, I could see the tears in his eyes.
The boys and Dom turned back toward the hotel. The beach was growing crowded. The early-morning fly fishermen were reeling in their lines as the cabana boys set up lounges and umbrellas.
“You want to walk or you want to sit?” I asked Al, who, despite his tan, looked stricken.
He answered me by heaving himself into one of the beach chairs. He leaned back, eyes closed. I sat at the edge of the chair, facing him, and took his hands in mine.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God, Rose. I never for a minute even suspected. What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to do the right thing, Al, like you always do. The boy is motherless and fatherless at probably the moment in his life when he most needs a parent.”
“This must be killing you. After all these years.”
“I thought back there that it would. But something happened to me. I saw the boy, not the sin that created the boy. I know this is going to sound like my cousin Nancy who spends too much time lighting candles and saying novenas, but I feel God put that boy in our lives for a reason. Did you notice how much—”
Across the Table Page 10
