When the World Was Young

by Tony Romano

  Vicki finally pulled everyone back into the living room and asked Anthony to lead us in prayer. We all held hands in a circle around the bed, Mama seemingly at the head of the circle. Papa held her hand on one side, and Vicki held the other. I don’t recall much of what Anthony said, but I remember his first few words: “Lord, as we gather here…” I squeezed Zia Lupa’s hand on one side and Uncle Vince’s on the other and imagined everyone else tightening their grips, too. As we gather here. I didn’t need any other words. These were the people who mattered most to me and we were together, sharing in something sacred and final. We’d all be at the head of the circle one day, and Mama was teaching us not to be afraid.

  The praying ended. We sat. We all looked off somewhere, alone in our thoughts. Then each of us took turns standing before Mama. She’d been drifting in and out of wakefulness without warning, her strength waning each time, and we wanted to say our farewells while we could, while she still knew us. Santo stepped up first. He clasped Mama’s frail hand in both of his and breathed deeply, forcing back tears, not saying anything. He bent down close to her, their faces almost touching, and whispered something to her. It seemed then as if no one else was in the room, as if no other breaths filled that cramped space. Thank you, he said. Thank you for understanding. I barely knew Santo, but I could see that something passed between them, a tacit avowal that Santo was her first, a secret glance between a mother and her oldest child that spoke of generations and history.

  But there was also apology in his eyes, though I’m not sure why. No one ever talked about Santo. He’d done something shameful, that much I gathered, but his sins were never fully disclosed, at least not to me. I remember overhearing fragments of conversations across back porches on summer nights when I was a kid. We’d play ring-a-levio, hiding out in dark corners behind trash cans, and the neighbors always talked freely, unaware that we were soaking in their adult secrets. Santo stole some money from the bar, some claimed. He married a woman twice his age, others said. He had a fistfight with his father, the poor man. Agostino had lost one son to fever and another to rage, they said.

  Santo did stop by the apartment now and then, but his visits were always brief and unexpected. He never appeared for birthdays or Christmas or Thanksgiving. And when he did show, he never brought his family. I did meet his oldest son one time, which seems almost like a dream now. I was sitting on the school steps with my softball and bat one morning, waiting for friends, when he pulled up to the church next door. He and his son got out, and I saw Santo pointing up to a classroom window and the iron fire escape. I didn’t recognize him until he got close. When he saw me, he smiled broadly, and I wondered what shameful thing he could have possibly done. He introduced me to his son, Joey, who looked maybe a little older than me, eleven or twelve, then the three of us threw the ball around awhile. There was nothing extraordinary about any of this, other than the fact that this was Santo. But a couple of things have stuck with me all these years. This son of Santo, this cousin of mine, he looked like what I imagined Benito would look like at that age, stocky and quick, with dark, alert eyes. The other thing that struck me was that Santo seemed thrilled about this meeting, as if he’d been planning it, in fact, and that he thought Joey and I would be great friends after this. But I never saw Joey again. And when I ran into Santo again a week later at the apartment, having lunch with Vicki and Mama, as if he’d been living there all along, he never mentioned our game of catch.

  Just as I’ve searched for evidence of Benito’s passing, I’ve tried to discover the reasons for Santo’s exile. Having lived in his room my entire life, I’ve examined every crack and corner. But he left no hidden letters beneath a loose plank of floor-board, no riddles inside a discarded toy, no ripped photos tucked away in the closet, no clues of any sort anywhere. But watching Santo comfort Mama, Papa clearly pleased, I didn’t need answers about the past. While little would change—Santo wouldn’t be breaking bread at Sunday dinners, there would be no conciliatory demonstrations of affection—the bitterness they’d harbored for so long now washed pale.

  Anthony and Freddy approached Mama next. They seemed at ease, smiling and talking to Mama as if they were sitting at her dinner table. Anthony handed her an ebony rosary he’d gotten blessed by the bishop, and Freddy showed her the recipe book he and Mama had been working on, a recent project that had given Freddy an excuse to come around more often. Mama became more excited about passing on the recipes than anyone would have imagined. Though feeding everyone was a priority, she always downplayed her abilities as a cook.

  Mama began to cough and everyone looked ready to leap to their feet, but Anthony and Freddy remained composed. They waited for Mama to stop and talked about what they would miss most. Her whistle. When they were kids, she’d step onto the back porch or crouch down by the front window and call them in with her two-note whistle they could hear from blocks away. Freddy backed away from the bed and whistled then. He could barely get it out, but he whistled, Mama’s whistle, a long high note followed by a shorter, lower one, to show that he would use those same notes to call in his own children. I could see that Mama was tired, only her eyes moving, but the corners of her mouth curled up when she heard that sound.

  Aunt Lupa and Uncle Vince said their good-byes next, both of them praying over Mama in Italian. They spoke of faith and heaven. Their prayers seemed glib and manufactured, but a visible calm spread across Mama’s face. I imagined that the prayers called up memories for Mama, sent her back to the catechisms of her youth and the innocence of those times.

  I stepped up next, not knowing what I’d say. I touched her hand. For the first time, Mama’s bottom lip quivered and if she had the strength she would have begun to cry. “It’s okay, Mama,” I said. “I’m going to be okay.” But suddenly I wasn’t sure that I would be and crimped the end of the bedsheet with my free hand. Vicki came up beside me and pulled me into her. She reached over and pushed Mama’s white hair away from her face, stroking the hair with her fingers. The hair looked smooth and soft and I wanted to touch it. With great effort Mama turned her head so she could take in her daughter more fully, and she said the last words I ever heard her say. You make, she started, and caught her breath. Her voice was raspy and hoarse and barely audible. You make sacrifice, she said. Mama’s spatulate fingers moved and Vicki let the fingers find hers. She placed her hand inside Mama’s, and Mama’s hand tightened. My only daughter, I imagined her thinking. I felt Vicki’s hand at my shoulder and then her fingers combing my hair.

  When it came Papa’s turn we all moved into the kitchen so that the two of them could have a few moments alone. I sat in the wood-rail chair and thought about all the meals Mama had served for us, her solitary complaint being that we didn’t eat enough. We probably didn’t need to leave the living room. We could hear Papa speaking softly to her, a steady cadence of prayers and reassurances to Mama that everyone would be okay. He knew this would be her main concern, everyone else. I had a strange thought then: this was the first time I’d ever heard Papa talking to Mama. She was always Mama to all of us, but now, in the privacy of her living room, amber lamplight casting long shadows along the gray-green carpet, she was a wife, too, Papa’s wife.

  He talked awhile longer, then called us back. We sat around, silent mostly, waiting for Mama to give us some sign that she wanted us to stay or go.

  Father Ernie finally came by. Vicki had called him at his South Side parish, but he’d been delayed and worry lined his face when he walked in. He raced straight to Mama and breathed a sigh through his mouth when he saw Mama’s chest rise and fall. Despite the gray around his temples and along the back, Uncle Vince and Papa still called him the young priest. He had a shyness about him that I liked right away, that reminded me of Anthony. He took his time greeting each of us, consoling us with his earnest eyes and boyish grin. He spoke softly, as if he were weighing each word. When it came time to administer last rites though, he took charge. He told everyone to gather around the bed as he blessed M
ama and applied his oils to her forehead. He said his prayers and then asked us to pray along with him. Our Father and Hail Mary. Our chorus of voices reciting those prayers in the living room chilled me. Mama’s eyes opened only briefly, and I’m not sure she recognized Father Ernie at all.

  He took his time saying good-bye to everyone, and Vicki walked him downstairs. Through the window I could see them below on the front stoop of the apartment. They talked for ten or fifteen minutes, and when she came back up, she looked away from us and dabbed her reddened eyes. She walked to Mama’s bed and patted her hand. Papa joined her, taking her other hand, and they whispered back and forth to Mama. Like heavy shades, the lids of Mama’s eyes slid open. Her mouth was permanently open now, as if gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come. “Tu ci lasci,” Papa told her. You can let go now. Mama showed no sign that she understood, but I wanted to believe she moved her fingers, that she squeezed Papa’s hand.

  I never marked the precise time of Mama’s passing, but I know it came shortly after this. In the middle of the night.

  We buried Mama next to Benito, her granite stone next to his sun-bleached marker, her mound of fresh dirt shading his small patch of earth. Over fall and winter, the dirt settled, and in the spring grass grew over the dirt, and day by day the summer sun baked her gravestone. Over the course of a single year, the two lots looked like one, as if Mama and Benito had always been together.

  Papa didn’t wait long to sell the apartment on Superior Street. Mama died in October, and two months later, he was living with his brother above Mio Fratello. I think Mama believed she’d be abandoning Benito if they moved, and she wouldn’t let go. For over twenty years she wouldn’t let go. But Papa couldn’t see staying, not after Mama was gone. He’d pace half the night, muttering to himself, the TV on low and the lights blazing, as if he couldn’t wait for morning. Still, I’m not sure Papa would have acted so quickly without Vicki’s urging. She cleaned up the apartment, discarded everything in storage in the basement, including all the Sophia Loren memorabilia, contacted the realtor, and assured Papa that everything would be okay. I’d already begun classes at Northeastern, living with Papa and commuting each day, so Vicki insisted I move in with her and her husband, where I could come and go as I pleased and where I still live to this day.

  They treat me like a son. Which makes me wonder why they don’t have children of their own. Vicki’s only thirty-seven. They’ve been married five years now. Happily, it seems. Her husband has a stable job teaching at a junior high in the south suburbs. Vicki works as a secretary in an office three blocks from home. But her eyes seem always wary, as if she’s waiting for some inevitable collapse in her good fortune. After all, she was married once before, to a Richie somebody from the neighborhood. But that didn’t last long. I picture the crying, Mama trying to console her but admonishing her at the same time, because whenever Mama talked about the failed marriage—never to me—she always cursed in a low, fierce whisper, insisting that wives don’t have to tell their husbands everything. My guess is that Vicki married him too soon and too young, that her marriage was a way for her to get her out of the house, though I’m not sure.

  I’m not sure about a lot of things.

  In fact, as I gaze out this bedroom window a year after Mama’s death, and take in the vastness of the starlit sky, I marvel at all the things I don’t know—the patterns of the constellations, the source of their illumination, how blackness can seem so bright. I don’t know anything, it seems. Some nights this vastness embroils me with frustration. Yet tonight I’m filled by it.

  I look across at the swell of rooftops and think about the old neighborhood: playing kick-the-can in front of St. Columbkille; sneaking into the side door of the Hub theater on Saturday afternoons; eating french fries dipped in beef gravy at Jimmy’s; lighting firecrackers at the feast; searching for empty pop bottles and cashing them in for potato chips and chocolate milk at the A&P; climbing the apartment stairs on Superior Street; sweeping the floor at Papa’s store, thinking I owned the place.

  The smell of fall is in the air. I imagine everyone else at their windows tonight, too—Papa, Vince, Lupa, Santo, Vicki, Freddy, Anthony—looking up at the same roiling sky or maybe staring down at the same river of rooftops, all of us thinking about Mama, and then Benito, each of us alone yet together.

  I’m the one who came after. But not so innocent anymore. I know they’ve kept things from me, things I’ll never know, but in the keeping they’ve taught me how to be a Peccatori, how to endure, and I’ve come to realize, finally, that I am more than just an afterthought.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply indebted to friends who offered invaluable support and unerring advice: Gary Anderson, Kevin Brewner, Jay Ferrari, Daniel Ferri, Dean Hacker, Billy Lombardo, Maria Mungai, and Edie White. A special thanks to the best reader I know, Henry Sampson, who was there at the first reading and who always has a kind word; the kindness means everything. I also want to thank inspirations Fred Gardaphè, the first editor to take an interest, and Tom Bracken, a wise and generous teacher. Many thanks to Julie Mosow for her valuable suggestions, and to Michael Radulescu for his encouragement and frequent assurances. Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, particularly Claire Wachtel, a brilliant editor who knows how to nurture more from a writer. Finally, I can’t thank enough the person who took a chance and brought this book to publication, the best agent any writer could hope for, Marly Rusoff.

  About the Author

  TONY ROMANO has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a two-time winner of a PEN Syndicated Fiction Project. His fiction has appeared in many publications, including the Chicago Tribune, and his stories have been produced for National Public Radio’s The Sound of Writing series. He lives near Chicago, Illinois.

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  Credits

  Jacket Design and Hand-Tinting by Paola Echavarria

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG. Copyright © 2007 by Tony Romano. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition April 2007 ISBN 9780061756016

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