by Tony Romano
If Angela Rosa reached out from her porch to Louise’s outstretched fingers, they could almost touch. They’d throw brown bags to each other filled with bleached flour or anise seed or even eggs to complete a recipe.
“Hey, lady,” Louise would shout. “Come out.” She had a warm, scratchy voice that cut through the clatter of any kitchen noises.
When Louise found out Angela Rosa was pregnant, she began calling her Mama, as if this were her first time. Anthony was already ten, so Angela Rosa, more nervous than ever, did feel like she was starting over.
“Hey, Mama,” Louise called. “Come out and play.”
She recalled one early evening in late September, just weeks before Louise would succumb finally to her lymphoma. Angela Rosa was eleven or twelve weeks along, just starting to show, and they talked about their own mothers. Louise had married, raised two boys, and now at fifty-six still harbored resentment or regret—she couldn’t say which—over not ever knowing her mother, who died when Louise was a girl. The only memories she retained were images of the hospital. Peering up a long stairwell into bright light. Her mother waving and blowing kisses from the top landing, her other hand holding back the limp gown. Just a harsh silhouette against marble walls. With her cancer, they wouldn’t let her own children near. Modern medicine. She couldn’t touch her own children. How could anyone be so ignorant? So Louise had nothing to hold on to then. Only the green medicinal smells that permeated even the car during the long rides home.
Louise never got to see Benito either. Those bony arms never got to hold him. Once, just after Benito’s birth, Angela Rosa walked out to the porch with Benito in her arms, and out of habit, nearly called out Louise’s name. When she remembered, she whispered Louise and told Benito about his old neighbor. She wanted to believe that each death brought birth, or renewal at least, but she wasn’t sure why this idea should comfort her.
Holding Benito now could still remind Angela Rosa of Louise’s last days, the stench of death everywhere in her neighbor’s apartment. She remembered bringing over a small bowl of shell pasta without sauce, something light. What else could she do? The cancer had spread quickly, taking away everything but Louise’s faint smile. Angela Rosa recalled the shame she felt each time she went over there, thinking about Louise’s mother at the top of the stairs, thinking, What if cancers were contagious? She fought back those fears and took Louise’s hand and stroked her hair, brushed it lightly, but she couldn’t erase that lump of doubt at the base of her stomach. Pregnant with her fifth child, and at her age, she had reason to doubt.
So, two days after the feast, when she went to check on Benito and found him dripping with fever, her poor baby still puffy-eyed and dizzy with sleep, Angela Rosa assumed the worst. His hair was matted, stamped down by the damp pillow. His diaper was bone-dry. When she lifted the shade a quarter, he turned away from the light and gazed blankly at the wall.
She placed a cool rag on his forehead, handed him to Victoria, and went downstairs to use old man Dominick’s phone to call the Tuscan doctor on Ashland Avenue. She cursed the busy signal she got the first five minutes, then composed herself when he finally answered. A doctor who answered his own phone, that’s why she went to him. He offered a few simple remedies she could try, but she insisted on seeing him, a steel urgency creeping into her voice. He agreed to stop by as soon as he could, in an hour or two perhaps. She torched up the stairs, taking in the reassuring slap of her slippers on each step, telling herself everything would be all right.
“He’s burning up,” Victoria said. She sat on the living-room carpet with Benito on her lap, rocking him.
“Bring towel—no, no, wait. Make wet.”
They took off his clothes and wrapped him in the cold towel, which produced barely a shiver. He coughed once and blinked slowly, pushing out the tip of his tongue for a moment, then pursed his dry lips. The towel quickly became warm.
“Bring milk, eh. Go.”
Victoria returned with his bottle. Angela Rosa raised his head and pushed the nipple into Benito’s mouth. He sucked twice and stopped.
“You want to try a cup, Mama?”
“Yeah yeah.”
Her American neighbors had told her Benito was getting too old for a bottle. And don’t let him suck his thumb, they told her. And you shouldn’t hold him so much. She was sorry she’d learned their English. Too much to listen to. And why was she thinking about their crazy worries now? She called for another towel, and for the next ten minutes they exchanged one warm towel for a chilled one, both of them glad to be busy doing something. Benito seemed content either way and looked as if he could fall asleep again.
“He feels a little cooler,” Victoria said.
“Maybe.”
Together they pinned a new diaper on him and slipped a cool, fresh undershirt over his head, working his arms through the sleeves one by one. They sat there on the floor listening to the refrigerator hum, the rhythm of a heartbeat. Sounds from the street drifted through the open window. The tapping of a horn, an engine’s sputter rising and fading, something deeply reassuring in that sound. The languor of children’s voices floated in the summer heat.
They waited. Benito fell asleep and they waited. Whenever a car door slammed Angela Rosa leaned toward the window and peered down. After a while, amid the silence, she could almost make out Louise’s scratchy voice calling faintly from the farthest reaches of the apartment. Hey, lady, she called. Angela Rosa gazed at the fibers in the carpet and shook her head. It would be two years next month. She imagined Louise standing outside the kitchen door now, her nose to the screen, her hands cupping her eyes like visors so she could see inside. “Go away,” Angela Rosa would kid. “Nobody home…go away.” Hey, Mama. What she wouldn’t give to hear that voice again.
Go away, she thought, a stippling coldness crawling up her arms. Go away. Not now. She glanced down at the street, a glimmer of awful light growing inside her head. It’s not time to meet my son.
A Saturday-afternoon wedding party sailed by on Grand Avenue, their tin cans strung along polished chrome fenders, their horns pounding out a wail of urgent honks. That sound never failed to draw Agostino to the street, sometimes with a bottle of Chianti in hand to wave in salute. Every now and then an eastbound procession would slow down enough to grab the wine. But this time Agostino didn’t move.
He sat in a corner booth and flicked ashes from his Lucky Strike into the mint-green glass tray. He liked how the scent from his laundered shirt slipped through the aroma of his cigarette, as if the shirt had its own smoky trail. The last taps of the horns faded down Grand, almost in time to the Sinatra ballad blowing out from the shelf speakers.
Three cigarettes later Agostino saw him. A young man with a tweed shirt who paced past the store, shielding his eyes from the sun. The man doubled back and retrieved a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and checked the number on the door. He glanced again at the slip, stepped back to take in the arc of letters on the window, then shuffled inside. He had short, sandy hair parted sensibly down the side. His eyes darted around in nervous alertness, a deep earnestness carved into the corners. He spotted Agostino and placed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.
Agostino suddenly recognized him, the young priest from St. Columbkille. “Father?” he said. “Come in come in. I don’t see your…” He put his hand to his neck to indicate a priest’s collar.
“Mr. Peccatori?” This was a voice unaccustomed to loudness.
“Yes. Sit please.” He got up and waved the priest into the booth.
“I’m Father Ernie.” He put out his hand.
“Yes. Yes. I am Agostino.”
Father Ernie settled into the booth, and Agostino raced off for a carafe of Burgundy and two glasses. He half filled each glass and sat down with a sigh.
Studying him, Agostino recalled the expression, a man of the cloth, because this one wore no collar. Nothing to distinguish him, except maybe the diocese-issued black oxfords and the measured reserve in h
is voice. And maybe the hands, the slow priest hands that gestured in colossal sweeps. Priests invariably had a calming effect on Agostino. He could spot the corrupt ones and immediately find common ground, a wink here or there, a veiled smirk. And the ones who thought themselves more pure reminded him of what he once was. Either way he could think aloud.
Agostino pointed outside. “The wedding. You hear?”
“Sure,” Father Ernie said. He had a high forehead, the hair already thinning along the top.
“You marry? You make wedding?”
“Sometimes.”
“When you make, what do you say?” He pointed to his temple. “In here.”
“What do I think?” He sipped his Burgundy and glanced out to the street, his eyes clear brown pools. “I think of the thousands of other weddings that came before in that church. And the tons of rice thrown. All the vows exchanged. One wedding dress after another. How they’re all the same. But they’re not. I feel renewed. Like I’m doing something worthwhile. I feel the same at funerals.”
“Ha. I feel, too. All the time, automobile they pass.” He pulled out his pack of Lucky Strikes. “Cigarette?”
“No.”
Agostino grinned. He’d put off Father Ernie’s business a little longer. “I want to ask. Do you wish, sometime, do you wish you make marry?”
Agostino finally got him to smile.
“I have this feeling you’re talking about more than marriage. You’re talking about carnal knowledge. The relations between a man and a woman. Is that it?”
Agostino shrugged. He thought, You are a man of the cloth, I am a man of the flesh.
“Even Christ was tempted,” Father Ernie said.
“For him, easy, no?” Agostino looked skyward and with his whole hand pointed there. “He know.”
“Know what?”
“Up there. They save spot for him.”
“And there’s no spot for you?”
“Maybe I don’t deserve.”
“We all deserve.”
“You never answer. Sometime you wish?”
He spoke slowly, as if Agostino would miss something otherwise. “You become accustomed to a way of life, Mr. Peccatori. You don’t imagine a choice beyond your own walls.”
Agostino saw a shadow cross the priest’s face.
“A man who asks about regrets,” Father Ernie said, “has a few of his own maybe.”
Agostino shut his eyes for a second and the image of sun-blasted olive trees appeared. He wanted their fragrance to engulf him, but all he smelled was the stale liquor that had penetrated the red vinyl seats.
“A young woman came to me the other day and spoke of you and your store.”
“Spoke?”
“She stopped by the rectory. She needed help, she said.”
“And you give help?”
“I tried. But I wanted to talk with you.”
“A woman, she come to priest, and priest come to me. Ha.”
“She mentioned a dress. She showed me a picture from a magazine. She’d been going through a difficult time, she said, and you helped her.”
“And now she want help more?”
“Maybe.”
Agostino spoke slowly. “How do I know—how do I know what you say is no my, how they say, obligation?”
“I think you know.”
“Now I know everything. Maybe I put collar. Why you come here?” And who was this priest who wouldn’t look you in the eye?
“The mother is upset. She wants what’s right.”
Agostino put out his hand and rubbed his thumb and fingers. “Salda. Money. That’s what she wants. I have store, little business, and people, they make jealous. They don’t know what I do to make business.”
“Maybe I should ask the woman to come in.”
“I don’t think she come here anymore.”
“Meet with her, then. If not for her, then…”
Agostino still could not gauge this young priest. Was he looking for his own share. Were those clear eyes full of deceit? Or did he simply want to wash his hands of the mess that Gabriella had dropped in his lap? Maybe there lurked a veiled threat in his urging. If not for her, then…Then what? For Agostino’s family? To protect them?
Sitting there across from the young priest during an early afternoon in the middle of June 1957, Agostino finally understood why his father was shot during the war. Fifteen years ago now. The old images came back. German soldiers had marched into his father’s village and settled in. In the middle of the night, a few families had decided to flee, including Agostino’s father and mother, but his father, his father went back. Agostino and Vince were thousands of miles away at the time, probably sitting in this same booth reading a paper about the war, so they’d only heard stories. Letters were written, of course, speculating over and over on why his father went back, most everyone agreeing he was simply trying to protect what was his. Agostino couldn’t dispute that, but he felt sure now that his father, having lost all he had worked for, went back because he wanted to die.
Vince ambled out from the back and stood at the bar with his hands on his hips. He’d been humming along to Sinatra, a soulful hum that didn’t remotely match the tune. He looked toward his brother’s booth.
“Che successo?” he asked.
“Wileyo. Come here.” Agostino pointed to Father Ernie and explained he was the young priest from St. Columbkille.
Vince wouldn’t look at the man. In Italian he asked, “Why do you bring a priest here?”
“Vincenzo, come here.”
“I’m going upstairs.”
“He come to bless the store.”
Vince crossed himself and tread slowly toward the booth. “I know one day you come. Father Ernie, hey?”
The priest looked to Agostino for explanation and put out his hand.
“Who tell you?” Vince said.
“Tell?”
“You bless store, no?”
“Sure, I can bless the store.”
“Who tell you to come?”
“Nobod—”
“I tell,” Agostino interrupted. “I tell.”
Agostino sent his brother for a bowl of water and explained Vince’s obsession to Father Ernie. Before the Depression, Mio Fratello had been a funeral parlor, one of the first in the neighborhood. When the owner died, he became the last one waked in the building, and the place remained empty for years. So by the time Vince stumbled upon the “For Sale” sign, the price was next to nothing. He scraped the letters off the front window and scrubbed the floors but still worried that maybe he damned himself for pouring whiskey after the dead. Profit and hell are bed partners, he always lamented in his Neapolitano tongue, which explained the inconsistent price list with Vince at the register. He knew cost and rarely dipped below that, but prices varied depending on the condition of his conscience. Around priests he became especially jittery.
Vince returned with the water, and Ernie prepared to bless the store.
Benediction. Absolution. These were words Agostino had seen somewhere, but he’d never heard them spoken. He wanted to say the words himself now, but the syllables would sound foreign on his tongue. He preferred to let the words swim around in his head, hear them ring against the Latin incantations spilling from Father Ernie’s lips as he dipped the tips of his fingers in the water. Benediction. Absolution. He wondered if there was time. He wondered if his own father had prayed just before he was struck down.
Vince hurriedly crossed himself as Father Ernie flicked beads of water toward the middle of the store. Agostino watched the spray turn into a fine mist and vanish. It bothered Agostino that he didn’t know the name of the brass wand that priests ordinarily used to sprinkle holy water. If he knew the name he might have asked about it. Then Father Ernie could return another time with the proper wand and his collar in place and his whispered Latin filling even the darkest corners of the store, and then he could set things right.
When Agostino arrived home after four that afternoon, A
ngela Rosa was wiping the Formica countertop next to the sink with a damp rag. She saw herself through his eyes at that first glimpse as he crossed the kitchen, and she felt something like relief. Seeing the rag in her hand, her husband couldn’t know about the fever and the doctor, and she could savor his innocence for a few moments.
“Something happened,” Agostino said. It was a question. When they were alone they spoke their native language, interrupted increasingly over the years with clipped English.
“Benito. He has a fever.”
“How high?”
“Too high.”
“He’s sleeping?”
“That’s all he wants to do.”
He ran a hand through his hair. He needed to tell her. Vince would advise against such a hasty confession, but he couldn’t contain this. The whole business demanded a degree of deception beyond his capacity for deception. He’d always believed that life, in the end, was just. You got what you deserved. Having scoffed at America’s preoccupation with infidelity, he knew this embroilment now was his due. There was no sidestepping that. Idiot Americans. They couldn’t understand that infidelity meant nothing. It was the covering up that sent husbands and wives into separate bedrooms.
Until now, Agostino felt he had little to hide. Americans might have called his short-lived entanglements affairs, but that word carried far too much weight. He preferred divertimente. Diversion. Not something to discuss over dinner, but easily tucked away into a tidy compartment in his head that no one asked about and that caused harm to no one. But this.
He could hear Vince now—what if Angela Rosa needed a diversion, hey? He couldn’t answer that one. He preferred not to think about it. He felt fairly certain that he and his wife had different needs and felt absolutely certain that had Angela Rosa strayed, the straying would mean something to her. And that made all the difference.
