When the World Was Young

by Tony Romano

  “And Mama today?”

  “She won’t stop cleaning. Yesterday she painted the kitchen. Took down all the wallpaper, the paper with all the strawberries on it. She painted the red legs of the table. Everything’s white now.”

  “She stay busy, eh? That’s good.”

  “I guess.”

  Vince leaned into the table. “Santo…you think about some a thing. Si?”

  “I’m always thinking about some thing, Zio.”

  Vince shook his head. “You want I give cigarette? Then no talk stupido.”

  “Sorry, Zio.” Santo hadn’t noticed Vince’s Pall Malls propped up against the ashtray. He reached over and grabbed one and lit it.

  “So. You think about some a thing?”

  How much did Vince need to know? How much did he know himself? “I was thinking about Christmas and New Year and after. What I was going to do after that.” He glanced at his fingers. They seemed ridiculously small. After a while he felt a restlessness in his legs and he got up and walked to the radio near the bar and turned it on low. Italian radio, but he didn’t bother to switch the station. He came back to the booth and sat down, looking for the nerve to go on.

  Vince studied the traffic on Grand for a while, picked up the newspaper, and deposited it in front of Santo. “Here,” he said with his half grin. “If you no wanta talk, play with your cucuzzo instead, eh.” And he made the stroking motion again.

  “Thanks, Zio. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Vince leaned back and folded his arms, waiting.

  “I was just thinking…about where I want to be. You know…next year, the year after that.” He held his cigarette as he puffed to see how far he could lengthen the ash. “How old were you, Zio? When you left? When you got off on your own?”

  “Ha. Dio mio. Let me see. I come 1932.” He glanced at the ceiling and calculated with his fingers. “Nineteen…twenty. I make twenty year when I come.” He shrugged and said to himself, “Long time ago.”

  “And then what?”

  Santo had heard the story before, but this time he wanted to listen for signs of apprehension or fear. He wanted to find out how a man could leave his native country with few skills and little English and still prosper on his own. Santo wasn’t sure he had the same drive or fearlessness or whatever it was that pushed someone out into the world.

  Vince told him about the small hotel room on Huron where he stayed the first few months. Just a bed and a common bathroom for everyone on his floor. He was working at a factory that manufactured rivets and washers, and one day on his way home, he saw a sign. A small black sign with red letters that said FOR RENT.

  Vince touched the window where they sat, where the sign had hung nearly twenty-five years ago, and explained why the rent was so cheap. The place had been a funeral parlor—rezoned or out of business, Vince didn’t know which. He couldn’t understand how a funeral parlor could ever go out of business, and each day as he walked by, he wondered what else could fill that space that people would need every day. Anyway, no one wanted to have anything to do with the place. So he moved in, walking from one room to the other, imagining changes. The embalming room caused him to pause, he admitted, and he avoided the first floor entirely after dusk, but day by day the place started feeling like his own.

  “Before, when they make funeral, they take liquid out from every one. Now I put a liquid back inside. So busyness is same, eh?”

  “I never looked at it that way, Zio. You should teach college.”

  Vince laughed. “College, eh. I go to six grade.”

  “Where else are people going to learn about running a business and liquids going in and out. You could do a whole semester on the three Cs. And don’t forget the newspaper. How to Read a Newspaper 101.”

  “Oh, yeh. You stay by me and I teach every thing. I teach to drink and lose wife. I teach to pee in big pot because the hips they make a pain. Dottore Vincenzo. Professore primo.” He talked slowly now, punching each word. “Vincenzo teach you to live upstairs by you busyness so you no go no place for twenty year.”

  “That’s just it,” Santo said. “I don’t mean disrespect or anything. But I don’t want to get stuck here at the bar for the rest of my life. I need to get out.”

  “Out, eh?” Vince seemed to consider this. “When?” he asked.

  The ash on Santo’s cigarette threatened to collapse, and he twirled it around one last time before flicking the caked ash into the glass tray. “I don’t know,” he said. “Soon, I guess. Maybe in the summer.”

  Santo could be ready next week, but summer sounded far enough away that Vince would view his leaving as just talk.

  “Summer, eh? And who pay apart-a-ment?”

  “I’ve been saving.”

  “You save, eh.”

  “Yeah. I mean…I could leave now if I wanted.”

  Vince shot him a wary look. “You leave now?”

  “I could.”

  “Gesù Cristo.” Vince slapped the edge of the table with both hands, rattling the ashtray. “La famiglia Peccatori, they lose two son in one year. Mama no cry ’nough? Ay yi yi. When she hear…” He made a hurried sign of the cross. “You make eighteen?”

  Santo nodded. “Eighteen and a half.”

  “Why you no wait? Save money. I buy you car. And pretty soon you make three Cs. You stay, you make happy. You see.”

  Santo hadn’t considered happiness. He only knew he needed distance from his family and that he wanted to be nearer to other things—his half brother for one. He’d been walking by Ella’s house again, recalling the sadness in her eyes. If he could talk to her. She’d warm up to him.

  “I guess I’m tired of waiting,” Santo told him.

  “You tired. Ha.”

  “Well, yeah. I’ve waited long enough. This is my time. I think.” His fingers drummed silently on the table. “I was thinking of my own business maybe.”

  “Busyness. Ha.”

  “I thought, you came here from another country and you did it.”

  Vince shrugged and nodded to concede the point but threw up his hands at the same time. He pointed at Santo and spoke with slow precision. “But now. Is different. Today, busyness they close every day. What kind of busyness you make?”

  Santo mashed his cigarette into the ashtray. “You remember Russo’s cousin? Petey I think his name was. He used to have that hot-dog stand with the cart. He’d be so busy he didn’t have to move the cart all night. He just sat on the same corner all summer. The last time I was at Russo’s, getting a haircut, I saw the whole cart thing behind the shop—the cart, the big wheels with the wooden spokes, the awning. The awning was a little ripped. But the whole thing was just laying there. I could fix it up. Paint it. Buy a new awning. Something with red and white stripes maybe. I’m telling you, people would line up.” Just talking about the cart and thinking about the steam from the silver box and the warm smells from the hot dogs and the mustard made Santo’s mouth water. “I think it would work. I could sell hot tamales, too, maybe.”

  “And when winter come? You take wheels off? Make big sled.”

  “Yeah, I’ll slide around on skis. Look, I haven’t figured out winter yet. Maybe I’ll make so much money I won’t have to work in the winter.”

  “Yeah. Like me. Every winter I close.”

  “C’mon, Zio. I’m serious. I was looking for a little encouragement. What if someone had come up to you when you were buying the store and said, ‘How’re you going to sell drinks in an old funeral home?’ Nobody gave you that, did they?”

  “Back before. Nobody say good. Nobody say bad. I joost do.”

  Santo waited and listened to the silence build between them. He looked at his uncle and said, “There was no one around to ask then. Was there?”

  Vince grinned, and Santo watched the slow change in his eyes. His uncle realized at last why Santo had come to him. Sitting there in his own bar, thousands of miles of ocean separating him from the places he’d left so many years ago, Vince couldn’t r
esist laughing. “So, what a you need?” he said, his face flushed.

  Santo wasn’t sure. Now that his uncle had offered to help, that seemed almost enough. He asked about permits and vendors and what to charge, and after a while Vince started offering his own ideas—this corner versus that one, special condiments, possible emblems Santo could paint on the cart.

  Vince glanced at the clock and pushed his chair from the table. “Mio Santo. Listen to me.” He gripped the edge of the table. “Why you no try like this? You sell hot dog. Si? You make money. But you stay home. And save. Abiti nella tua casa.”

  Santo nodded, willing to consider this.

  He could get himself established on some corner, venture farther and farther from the neighborhood each day until no one even realized he was gone. The one thing his parents understood was work, so when they saw him making money, they wouldn’t object.

  “Okay, Zio. I’ll think about it. But do me a favor. When Russo comes in, ask him about the cart. If you talk to him, he’ll probably give it to you for nothing. That’s what I’m thinking. It’s just sitting there.”

  “Sure, I do anything for mio nipoto.” He stood up. “Ahh. But now…I pee.”

  Victoria was in no hurry to get home. School had let out for Christmas vacation. Darlene was gone, picked up by her mom from school and taken to Michigan, where she’d be spending the next two weeks with cousins. Eddie had been cool to her lately, and she couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong, only that she was sixteen and couldn’t get out of the house to see him whenever he wanted and that Eddie seemed to be tiring of that. She’d try again to stop thinking about him. And so she walked.

  She strolled up and down the east-west streets near school—Huron, Ohio, Ontario—avoiding Erie, until she came upon Crazy Willie at North Paulina. She turned to follow him, to find out where he went each day. He trooped down the sidewalk, so Victoria had to adjust her pace to keep up with him. His arms traveled too far in their upward swing, and his stride was nearly a lunge, but there was a solid rhythm in his movements, his head bobbing deep with each step. Even the slight hitch as he pushed off his left leg was fluid. He was tall and lumbering and slightly bloated, and his swiftness created the effect of treading water, that if he slowed up he might sink.

  Usually Willie was a blur that flew past her at one corner or another, but following him produced a calmness in Victoria that surprised her. Neither of them had anyplace to be. Halfway down the second block on Paulina, Willie suddenly stopped, turned, put his open palms on his hips, and stared directly at Victoria with his crooked glare. With two fingers he pushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen over his right eye. When he straightened his neck the hair fell right back over the eye. He wore the same dumbfounded smile he always wore. As she neared him she thought she might veer away toward the other side of the street, but she’d established her own rhythm and kept moving toward him. He began to chew on his palm.

  “Crazy Willie,” she called. She said it brightly, knowing that the invitation in her voice would set him off laughing. His laugh was a low rumble that came directly from his throat. “How are you, Willie?”

  She didn’t slow down, knowing he’d start up again when she passed. She heard him chuckle slightly behind her, then next to her.

  “Walking, Willie?”

  “Yeah. Walking,” he said. He talked out of the corner of his mouth. “I like to walk.”

  “Where do you walk?”

  “I like to walk.”

  “You’re lucky, Willie. You get to walk all day. Anywhere you want to go. It’s when you stop that they bother you sometimes, isn’t it. They don’t mean anything. But sometimes they go too far. I know. Don’t let them bother you.”

  Victoria had been dragging when school let out, but the brisk walk slapped her awake. A ring of moist warmth began forming along the back of her neck, dampening the collar of her blouse.

  “You don’t even know how lucky you are, Willie. Do you ever read the newspaper or listen to the radio?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, the radio. I like the radio.”

  “I mean the news. Do you ever listen to the news? People doing all kinds of awful things to each other. Things I don’t even want to think about. You’re lucky. You don’t follow any of that, do you?”

  She turned east and he stayed with her, his meaty hands cutting the air. She hoped that no one she knew would spot her walking with Willie, her new boyfriend.

  “What about a girlfriend? Ever had a girlfriend, Willie? Not that you’re missing anything. My boyfriend, he’s been, you know, impatient lately, like he can’t wait for me to leave or something when I’m with him. Ever since we, you know. And I don’t think it’s just my imagination.” Under her breath she added, “If I’d of known he was going to act this way, we would’ve never ended up where we did.”

  Twice, in the backseat of his aunt’s car, she had let Eddie go all the way. He was tender and careful each time, whispering reassurances, but it ended too abruptly, her every movement clumsy and deliberate. She could only remember her legs and arms, how her feet pushed into the car door to ease away from him, causing a tightening in her thighs, and how her one hand clenched that backseat while the other reached and fell loosely along the front. The rest of her was vaguely numb. And though she wanted to be with him, she found herself waiting for him to finish so they could just hold each other like they used to. Holding him would have been enough. And touching would have satisfied her, taking in the contours of his chest and the shadow of an arm across the seat. All those intimate glimpses that were burned in her memory would have been enough.

  But she knew there was no going back. She would turn seventeen soon and she was no longer a virgin, an idea that stopped her cold sometimes but also amazed her, how quickly she’d become used to this new self, easier than breaking in a new pair of shoes.

  She walked faster, taking Willie out of his rhythm now. He nearly stumbled.

  “Let me ask you a question, Willie. Are all guy pigs? Once they get what they want, do they all turn into big fat pigs?”

  Willie snorted, looking more amused than usual.

  “And if my boyfriend is a pig, where does that leave me?”

  Willie snorted some more. “That’s funny. A pig,” he said. “Eddie the pig.”

  Victoria suddenly stopped and looked over to where Willie would have been had he stopped, too. But he kept moving. She ran to him, shuffling and sliding to keep slightly ahead of him so she could look him full in the face. “Jesus Mary Joseph,” she said. “You son of a—how’d you know Eddie was my boyfriend. How’d you know about Eddie and me?”

  “Ha ha. Eddie the pig. I like that.”

  “Yeah, real funny. A riot. How did you know Eddie was my boyfriend?”

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and wiped the hand on his pants.

  “Will—ee.”

  Willie snorted.

  “For cripe’s sake, Willie. Talk to me. Do you ever talk to Eddie? Is that how you know?”

  Willie seemed content with the image of Eddie as pig and snorted again.

  Victoria stopped pressing. She looked ahead down the block and fell in step with her new friend. The shadows from the trees had become longer, their leaves less distinct. The sky was lead gray. “So what else do you know? Are you some kind of genius or something who knows everything but can’t get it out? Are they going to write a book about you someday? Call it Walking Willie?”

  “Ha. Yeah. I like to walk.”

  Or Crazy Willie Walking, she thought. Or not so crazy.

  They walked awhile longer, Victoria feeling the pull of home. Her mother would be pacing already. Willie, though, had all the time in the world. And no worries. None that he could carry with him at least. Willie, she decided, was someone she could dump all her worries on and who wouldn’t be weighed down by what she saw as the enormity of those worries. She told him about the fight between Eddie and Santo and storming into her brother’s room one Sunday and how Santo leape
d at any chance to lecture her.

  “After the fight, three, four days later, Santo went on and on about seeing Papa at the feast. I’d mostly forgotten about that. Too many other things to think about with all that happened. But Santo…He told me Eddie would try to tell me some crazy story about why the old lady was yelling at Papa that night. Like Eddie’s going to know anything about Papa. Or care. Here’s the crazy thing—Santo is all bothered by Eddie and some story, and Eddie has never said a word. Not a single word. I think what it is, is that my brother likes to think he knows things that no one else knows. He walks around with this look, you know, like he’s hiding something. Well, I know a few things, too, Willie. You know what I know? I know shit from shinola. That’s right. And I know the backseat of a car even though I regret it mostly. And I know what it’s goddamn like to lose a little brother in my arms and I know I don’t need another goddamn person telling me what to think.”

  Willie had stopped smiling and was gnawing at his palm.

  Victoria touched his elbow to slow him down. “Sorry, Willie. I didn’t mean to upset you. I won’t talk like that anymore. I promise. How does a pig go, Willie? That’s right. Eddie the pig. Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll walk some more. Then I need to get home. I need to get home, Willie.”

  Part 2

  August 1977

  NICHOLAS PECCATORI

  Mama’s boy they used to call me at home. What did they expect? I came into this world on the heels of a brother who’d become a saint by dying. What else could I be? Anthony or Freddy would have been shamed to earn such a label. But I didn’t mind. If it wasn’t Mama getting meals for me or washing my face, it was Victoria patting down my hair and getting me ready for school. I didn’t feel any weaker for giving in, for allowing my sandwiches to be cut or my shoes to be tied. Even early on I knew I was giving Mama and Vicki what they needed, what we all needed, despite the teasing the others doled out.

  The teasing will end for good soon, I suppose, once I leave for college in the fall, not such a monumental move since I’ll be staying close, but I wonder sometimes how such changes begin. I try to trace them back to their source, and when I think about my role in the family, I always come back to that first touch. Mama and Papa had lost a son. They no doubt slogged through the apartment for months afterward—I’ve seen such periods of isolation, slow winters and even slower summers. They ate, they worked, they slept when they could. Then one day in the fall of 1958, when everyone was at school maybe or in the middle of the night, in the darkness of their bedroom, one of them reached out to the other and with the barest of touches said, Enough. I never imagine beyond this, of course, but that first contact is so visceral to me, the reaching, the craving. I am the result of that throbbing ache which has since faded to the dimmest of memories.