When the World Was Young

by Tony Romano

  Though he hated the thought of being estranged from his family, especially now with Mama bringing home the new baby, he feared he might have no other options. A part of him believed that his leaving might be noble. He would leave to keep his family intact. He would leave to bring peace to Ella’s family. Ella had already begun to convince her mother that Santo was in fact Joey’s father, that Agostino had simply been trying to cover up for his son, who was young, with a promising future ahead of him. Ella’s mother, always practical, would accept this lie or risk not seeing her grandson again. And the lie was more palatable, something she could pass off to her friends with relatively little shame.

  There was only one person in the family he could talk to, so he stopped at the store that morning before his father arrived. He knocked on the apartment door upstairs and waited at the sewing machine, pumping the pedal, the silver needle rising and falling in rhythmic clicks. His father used to tell him that sewing was a lost art but never bothered to teach him a single stitch. When it became clear that Vince wasn’t going to answer, he let himself in and poured some milk in a glass. After downing the glass, he lit up one of his uncle’s cigarettes and focused on nothing more than each puff and the sunlight pouring through the front window. A trolley wheezed by, and his uncle finally appeared.

  Vince stopped midstride. “Listen,” he said. “Outside. You hear? Pretty soon you no hear no more. They make new bus. All gasoline. Somebody make rich, eh? No me.”

  “You do pretty well for yourself, Zio.”

  “No complain.” He lit a burner on the oven and set a pot of coffee over the flame. “Coff?” Santo shook his head, and Vince poured a shot of whiskey into a cup. He waited at the stove, and when the coffee began boiling he topped off the whiskey with the steaming brew. He sat down and sipped. “Ahh.”

  “Nothing like that first cup, huh, Zio?”

  Vince’s eyes were rimmed a bruised purple and the whites were shot with blood lines. “Why you no drink coff, eh?”

  “Someday maybe.”

  “Some a day. Always some a day con mio Santo.”

  Santo poured himself more milk. “Sometimes ‘some a day’ comes sooner than you think,” Santo told him.

  Vince sipped his coffee and peered at his nephew over the cup’s rim.

  That pensive stare. That shrewd glance. Vince always seemed to know when Santo had something on his mind.

  “Ah, mio Santo. Is early.”

  “It’s past eleven.”

  “Ha. ’Leven. Pretty soon make dark.”

  Santo let him joke around awhile, let him wake up. Vince asked how the old Caddy was running. Rather than trading in his old car and getting nothing for it from the bastard dealers, Vince had given the Caddy to Santo, the only other Peccatori with a driver’s license. When he handed his nephew the keys he announced, “Now you have two Cs, the coin and the car.” At the time, Santo didn’t mention that he’d had his share of the third C, which was what he needed to talk to his uncle about now. He’d been saving, really saving. Not just talking about it. And Ella had more put aside than he did.

  Yesterday’s cup and saucer were still on the table, and Santo pulled the saucer close to him and tapped it with his fingernails. “I’m getting married,” he blurted. The words sounded strange spoken, and Santo could barely believe what he’d said.

  Vince lifted his cup in a toast. “Bravo,” he said. “Salute!”

  “I mean it, Zio.”

  “Who marry you?”

  “I don’t know. Probably lots of women. But there’s one…”

  “One, eh?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. It’s not easy to say.”

  “Marriage no easy.”

  “No, that’s not the problem. The one I want to marry…”

  “Brute?”

  “No, she’s not ugly. Believe me. She could be in a movie.”

  “Trouble,” Vince said. He told Santo about his old wife, how beautiful she was, how other men constantly eyed her, nothing Santo hadn’t heard before.

  “That’s not it either. This one dresses plain. You wouldn’t notice her unless—”

  “So no trouble.” He shot a sudden look over to his nephew, then rubbed his broad belly and asked, “No trouble?”

  “No. No trouble. Nothing like that.”

  “Good. No trouble. So when you make twenty-five, you marry, eh?”

  How could he explain? You see, Uncle. She has this kid, this two-year-old who needs a father around, and if you could just see this kid, this nephew of yours you’ve never laid eyes on, which is a shitty deal, believe me, you’d fall in love with him on the spot guaranteed. But that’s not the problem. If you and Papa don’t care to see him, you won’t see him. No sweat off my back. The problem is this, the problem is his mother. I know you don’t want to see her either, I can understand that, but I do. I definitely do. I want to marry her. But how do I—it’s not like I can bring her around at Christmastime or Easter or Mama’s birthday. And I don’t see how I can live a normal life in the neighborhood like this, you know…I mean I can keep this, I don’t need to be blabbing to everyone, but what would Papa say? I need to work this out with Papa. Maybe if you talk to him, break it to him.

  Vince offered him his placating half grin.

  “The thing is, I don’t want to wait. I love her. I want to marry her now.”

  Vince rubbed his eyes. “Then why you wait? No wait. Call priest. Order cake. Make honeymoon. Buy house. Work work work and die. Hurry. No wait. Go. Make wedding.”

  Santo laughed and went on laughing, louder and longer than he might have if his nerves weren’t so tangled because in the middle of his laughing he decided he would drop his little bombshell in Vince’s kitchen and wait for the inevitable eruption. He wouldn’t say he derived great satisfaction in disrupting the even disposition his uncle had worked years to master, but he did feel a surge of blood, a quivering pulsation in his chest and in his arms and down through his legs.

  “The problem…this is the problem, Zio. You see, she—her name is Gabriella Paolone.”

  Vince grumbled, his half grin smeared across his face, plastered there. Santo could read his uncle’s thoughts in that grin. You little prick. Gabriella Paolone. That name is like a curse to me. I give you my Caddy and you throw that name in my face. The grin broadened and his eyes widened into a crazed stare and then the ranting began. Full-fledged, deep-throated, ruddy-faced ranting that aroused admiration in Santo. He wished he could become that incensed about something. His uncle sprang from his chair and unleashed his usual lamentations while Santo sat back and waited for the inevitable calm. He watched the clock. The roar was so loud he never heard the creaking of the stairs or the footsteps just outside the door or the turning of the doorknob. He only saw the light from behind him shift slightly as the porch door swung open and his father appeared.

  “What is this noise?” asked Agostino.

  Santo’s heart seized up. All his bravado left him. Here was the man he most feared, a thought that struck him with a fullness he’d never felt before. He’d never fully articulated in his mind the fear he had of his father. Not until that moment, Gabriella Paolone’s name still ringing in the air.

  “Tuo figlio,” Vince said.

  “Yes, my son. But what is all this screaming?”

  “Gabriella Paolone,” Vince shouted, as if this name would explain everything.

  Agostino winced as if slashed from behind. His jaw muscles worked. “What does she want?”

  Vince pointed to Santo, accusing and dismissing him at the same time. “Tuo figlio.”

  “Che?”

  “Lei vuole tuo figlio.”

  “What do you say?”

  “Gesù Cristo. Tuo figlio. Tuo figlio primo. She want this son now. Santo.”

  Agostino looked puzzled. “Santo is in trouble?”

  Vince stopped and pointed to Santo again. “He. He want to make wedding. With that putana Paolone.”

  “Wedding?”

  “S
i, wedding.”

  “Santo make trouble?”

  Santo rose from his chair, and the three of them stood around the table now. “I’m not in any trouble,” he shouted. “I’m not in any goddamn trouble.”

  Agostino looked at his brother and shrugged. “Then why—”

  “Is that all you can think about?” Santo screamed. “Trouble? Getting rid of trouble? Covering things up? I’m tired of all the whispering around here.”

  “What whisper?” Agostino shouted. “Nobody whisper. Everybody scream.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Papa. I’m tired of that, too.”

  “What dumb?”

  “I know you have a son.”

  “I make four son.” He crossed himself and asked God to bless Benito.

  “And Nicholas,” Vince added.

  “And Nicholas, yes.”

  “I know you have another son, Papa. I can bring him here tomorrow and show you. He looks like us. He looks like all of us. It’s time to quit pretending.”

  “I no pretend. You crazy.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. Gabriella’s not going to tell anyone. I just want it out in the open between us.”

  The two brothers exchanged tired glances.

  Vince shook his head, his eyes downcast. “America,” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with America,” Santo shouted. “We make our own goddamn troubles.”

  “You want wedding?” Agostino asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I want, dammit. That’s what I want.” He banged the table with the heel of his hand.

  “With that putana?”

  “She’s not a whore, Papa.”

  “Why you do this to me?”

  “I’m not doing this to you, Papa. I’m not doing this to hurt you.” But Santo knew this was exactly what he was doing to his father, inserting daggers. And in his screaming, in his killing, he felt remorse.

  “If you marry,” Agostino said, pointing a finger, “if you marry this putana, you leave my house and you leave my store.” His voice was firm, his jaw steady. “Capisci?”

  Santo glanced at his uncle, who seemed to be pinching his hip to secure it in a certain position. Agony lined his face. Santo felt remorse over his uncle’s pain, too.

  “I don’t need your blessing,” Santo said, more evenly now. “I just want this out in the open.”

  The two brothers turned to each other and began rambling in Italian, their voices echoing off the kitchen walls, their hands gesturing wildly. Agostino cut Vince off finally and turned to his son.

  “If you marry, you leave,” he said gravely.

  “Please, Papa. Don’t talk that way.”

  Agostino stepped from the kitchen and walked to the front window. He pulled aside the curtain, leaned down into the window, and gazed outside. He tucked his other hand in his back pocket and remained frozen like that for a while. And then it happened. Not ten feet away from him, his father unraveled. He began talking to himself. Santo had seen signs of this solitary give-and-take since Benito’s passing, but it had grown worse since Mama left. The talking always started slowly with mild reprimands to himself, but then the pacing and the gesturing would begin and before long he’d be slapping his forehead and berating himself with fierce hard-edged whispers. And that’s what disturbed Santo the most, the whispering, as if his father imagined that no one could hear him, or worse, that his father believed all the whispering was happening inside his head, for when Santo glanced at him, hoping to embarrass him into silence, Agostino showed no signs that anyone was near.

  Santo looked across at his uncle for help, but Vince seemed lost somewhere, too. He held his hip. Apparently he’d heard the talking before and didn’t seem at all fazed by his brother’s fury. And so they waited. They waited for the pacing and the whispering to spin itself out. When it did, Agostino returned to the window, his back to them. He fingered the bottom of the paper shade, pulling at it, then easing his grip so that the shade would slide up with his hand. He let the shade rise to the top and seemed satisfied. He turned and looked toward the kitchen.

  “If you marry, you leave.”

  All the sternness had drained out of his father’s warning. He couldn’t even meet Santo’s gaze. His eyes were suddenly glassy and distant. He would deliver the admonitions he thought he needed to give, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  If you marry, you leave. Standing stock-still in Vince’s kitchen, his arms folded now across his chest, Santo knew these words were his destiny. These words his father couldn’t take back. With his awful pride, he wouldn’t be able to see past this. Santo knew he’d crossed some line, broken some code, and there was nothing left to salvage. Even if he gave in now and agreed to forsake this marriage, even this would not matter anymore.

  For the first time he saw his future clearly. He and Ella would be together and maybe have children. He’d venture into the neighborhood now and then to visit Mama and his brothers and Vicki. But he’d never set foot on this spot again. He’d never work with Uncle Vince again. Maybe he and his uncle would meet for coffee somewhere, maybe mornings at some regular time. He’d like that. But he wasn’t sure when he’d ever see his father again.

  “Bye, Papa.”

  Agostino turned to the window.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” Santo called. “I’m sorry I have to leave.”

  He wanted to touch his father’s shoulder before he left, press and hold it there for a moment, he wanted to leave him with that, but he knew he wouldn’t. He turned and trudged down the stairs, one plodding step after another, allowing each footfall to become stamped in the same memory trace as the whispering, to which he could already hear the echoes.

  When she saw him again, looking about as forlorn as she’d ever seen him, her husband of over twenty years, she let out a muffled cry. “Agostino,” she said. She breathed in her husband’s name as it rang in the air. She hadn’t said his name in so long she’d forgotten the sound of it. “Oh, Agostino.”

  They embraced and held the embrace.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “It’s been too long.”

  “And the others?”

  “Your brother dropped me at the door. They’re coming. They’re sorting luggage. It was so good to see Anthony again. He was a big help with the bags.”

  They stepped apart, wiping their eyes. He was glad now that he’d closed the store for a few hours so he could properly welcome everyone. The last time they’d closed Mio Fratello was for Benito.

  “You look good,” he told her. “Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes, everyone is fine.”

  “Are you happy to be home?”

  “Happy, yes. Finally home.” She scanned the apartment for signs of her other sons. “And Santo? Alfredo?”

  “Alfredo’s out playing. He’ll be in soon. I warned him.”

  They heard the heavy thud of footsteps and Vince’s voice booming in the stairwell. “Delivery speciale,” he shouted. He came into sight step by crooked step, holding Nicholas as if he were a log of hard salami. “I present to you, mio nipoto,” he said. My nephew.

  Agostino took the baby because there was nothing else to do, but he couldn’t find any words. He could barely breathe. He kissed the baby on the forehead without looking at him and watched them all emerge from the stairwell, Anthony, Lupa, and lastly Victoria, who appeared both gaunt and bloated. Still holding the baby, he kissed each one in turn and retreated to the couch behind him.

  They all followed and collapsed into sofas and chairs, catching their breaths. Lupa filled the apartment with chatter about planes and shuttle buses and the conditions they’d had to endure these past months, while Agostino gazed at this baby. Nicholas. A good name. A name a young person might choose. He wasn’t sure what to feel. This boy could be his son. There was nothing to distinguish him otherwise. His complexion was a shade lighter perhaps but only a shade. The baby began to fuss, and Victoria was there to take
him.

  She paced about the room with the baby on her shoulder and patted him lightly. The odor of the eight-hour flight was still on her, jet fuel and carpet disinfectant, along with cabin handbags filled with Romano cheese and provolone. That, and the rumble of the engines at the back where they sat in the last few rows, had made her queasy. She still felt light-headed, off-center. She thought the short ride home in Uncle Vince’s new Cadillac would steady her, but she felt a different sort of dizziness then. The neighborhood looked compressed, one tiny block pushing onto another. The tight grid of city streets she’d walked along for hours on end her entire life no longer seemed like hers. Even the apartment seemed smaller—the stairwell, the landing, these couches. And now with Nicholas on her shoulder, his anguished wail of hunger pushing out from his tiny lungs, she knew through her grogginess that her old life was over. She slipped down the hallway to her bedroom.

  Angela Rosa couldn’t sit. She followed Victoria, grateful for Lupa’s ranting behind her. She went to the refrigerator, carried back a dish of antipasto that Agostino had left there, then caught up with her daughter in her bedroom.

  “He make hungry?” Angela Rosa whispered.

  Victoria sat on a chair near the foot of the bed. “Yeah. He must be starving.”

  Angela Rosa took her daughter’s face in her hands and kissed her hard on the cheek. “My daughter,” she said. “Ti amo.” I love you.

  “I know, Mama.”

  Angela Rosa sat across from them on the edge of the bed and watched her daughter feed this new arrival. She prayed to God they were doing the right thing. She hoped the rash plan they’d laid out wasn’t born of selfishness or self-pity, all designed to ease her own lingering grief. Now that she was back in the apartment, one certainty struck her, though—this baby would thrive here. Early on in their European sojourn, she and Lupa had discussed the possibility of leaving the baby behind with Cousin Serafina in Naples. She shuddered at the thought now and felt shame for not including her daughter in these considerations. She felt then that she couldn’t trust Victoria to be reasonable, especially with Lupa around. But Victoria had been nothing but clearheaded and able. And she’d proven to be agreeable, if grudgingly so.