Dinner at Fiorello’s

by Rick R. Reed

  Henry stared straight ahead, as if he was considering Vito’s words. “You’d do that for me? What about the restaurant?”

  “They’ll survive. But not for long, which is why we’ve got to get moving.” He grabbed Henry’s arm. “Come on, get up.”

  Henry complied. He rewrapped the bloody towel around his thumb.

  They set off for the Jarvis station.

  VITO SAT with Henry in the emergency room of St. Francis Hospital. All around them people bustled, people in pain, people intent on helping, people exhausted, people overworked.

  “I don’t know how they’ll ever be able to fix this,” Henry moaned. Vito noticed Henry’s hands trembled. “How can they stitch it? There’s not enough skin to even pull together.”

  “Hey, look at this.” Vito held out a forefinger. A patch of very smooth skin—scar tissue—crowned the top of it. “Cut the top clean off when I was chiffonading basil, and I came here. They used some kind of foam on it that clung to the cut, sort of like a scab. When the wound closed up, it fell off. Easy. They’ll do the same for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. You’ll be okay.” Vito patted Henry’s knee.

  Henry looked up at him. “Why are you doing this?”

  Vito wasn’t sure he knew himself. Or if he did, maybe he wasn’t ready to accept the truth yet. “Because you’re hurt. And hurting.”

  Just then a nurse called out Henry’s name.

  Vito said, “You want me to come with?”

  “No. It’s okay. I’m a big boy. Bigger than I thought.” He started away and then stopped. Something liquid glinted in his eyes, and there was a trace of desperation in his voice as he asked, “But will you wait for me?”

  Vito knew he shouldn’t, knew he should get back to the restaurant so Rosalie wouldn’t be forced to handle the busy dinner crowd alone. But he said, “I’ll be right here.”

  Vito leaned back in the hard plastic chair and watched Henry walk away. He knew the cut was really no big deal. They’d take care of him—give him a tetanus shot if he needed it, wash it out, put some antiseptic ointment on it, and then apply whatever miracle foam they used to staunch the bleeding on cuts that couldn’t be stitched.

  Vito was more worried about whatever hurt the boy was experiencing when he came into the restaurant, the hurt that caused him to injure himself, the hurt that stole away his focus.

  After Henry disappeared, Vito was surprised to realize he wished Henry had asked Vito to come with him. He knew Henry would probably be waiting back there, and an urge to comfort him rose up within Vito. He could at least sit with him and wait for the doctor, maybe hold his hand….

  Was that so terrible?

  Vito lowered his head to his hands and covered his face. Yes. It’s terrible. You can’t allow yourself to feel for this kid what you felt for Sal or Kevin. You can’t let yourself be hurt again. That kid is on his way somewhere, and it’s not beside you. You let him in and yeah, there might be a little dalliance this summer, but then it’ll be over and you’ll be left with only the dogs… again. Be smart. Leave him alone.

  Vito lifted his head to gaze at the void Henry had left behind when he disappeared with the nurse through the swinging doors. He could visualize Henry’s strong frame, his blond hair, the way his pants, too loose, sagged around his waist. He wanted to put his arm around Henry, to shore up his uncertain gait.

  Vito couldn’t help it. Being here, in the emergency room, caused him to slip into memory. He never wanted to think about that night again. Yet here it was, this emergency room causing the memory to rise up like a grinning demon to stare him in the face.

  It wasn’t St. Francis. It was some other hospital, and it didn’t really matter which one. Most emergency rooms were the same, and anyone who’s been to one has been to them all. The sick, the injured, the impatient, an aroma of terror and hope mingled with the scent of antiseptic in the air.

  They had called him at work. It was a busy Friday night, and it had been Kevin’s birthday. Kevin had wanted the three of them to celebrate together, to go out for a kiddie night at Chuck E. Cheese or someplace like that, gorge themselves on bad pizza and cake and ice cream, play silly games.

  Kevin could be childish like that. No, childish wasn’t the word. Childlike. There was something innocent about him. He was a kind, simple spirit.

  He had bonded with Sal, Vito’s son, practically the moment they were introduced. Maybe it was because of the child that continued to live on within Kevin, unlike most adults, who killed their inner child or had it killed for them by disillusion and the broad spectrum of pain life doled out.

  So when Rosalie had called Vito into work that night when their other chef couldn’t come in because of car trouble, what could he do but say yes? He wasn’t the kind of guy to leave the people at Fiorello’s, a second family, really, high and dry.

  “You’re going into work? On my birthday?” Kevin had asked, the hurt obvious in his blue eyes.

  “I have to. They’re shorthanded.”

  “But it’s my birthday.”

  “Kev, you’re a grown man. Birthdays don’t matter. We can celebrate tomorrow or Monday, when the restaurant is closed.”

  Kevin had shaken his head and said softly, once more, “But it’s my birthday.”

  “You’ll live,” Vito had said, taking Kevin into his arms, stroking his back.

  God, how he remembered those last few words—and how wrong they were! Now he could never hear that common scold without wincing, without pain. Over and over, he had recriminated himself for not telling Rosalie no, for even picking up his phone that night when he saw, with sinking dread, that it was the restaurant calling and knowing, even before he picked up, that they’d want him to come in.

  If he had just done that, the outcome of the night would have been different. He would have been with them, and they would have left five minutes later or ten minutes earlier. They would have taken a different route. A million different scenarios could have played out, and in Vito’s mind, each of them had a happy ending. Happy because they would not have been what had really occurred.

  If only I’d gone with them! We might have not taken the Eisenhower home. I hate driving on the expressway anyway. We would have made our way on a surface street, a local road. They would have been safer. They wouldn’t have been clipped as the drunk driver behind them clipped their back bumper, causing them to flip….

  Vito bowed his head again, using as mighty an effort of will as he could to block the movie playing in his mind.

  They had called him at work, a policewoman. He still remembered her name because it was the name of some male comedian who’d once been on Saturday Night Live, Dana Carvey.

  “Mr. Carelli? This is Dana Carvey from the Illinois State Police.”

  Vito’s heart had leaped into his throat. Instinct told him this could not be good news. But a part of him was desperate to stave off whatever it was she had called to say, so he had laughed, laughed hard.

  The woman had seemed taken aback. The line went silent.

  “Dana Carvey? Seriously?” Vito asked, laughing so hard there were tears rolling down his cheeks. “Isn’t that special?” Vito had gasped.

  She ignored the laughter, probably having heard it before. “Mr. Carelli? I’m so sorry to tell you—”

  Vito hadn’t heard the words she used to inform him that his husband and son were killed in a car accident. He hadn’t heard because the phone had slipped from his hands and he had slipped to the floor. He hadn’t heard, until much later, that Sal had been killed instantly while Kevin died in the emergency room.

  A place much like this one….

  Vito looked around himself, feeling shaken. He couldn’t remember some of the details of that night, like Rosalie and Carmela rushing him to the hospital, even though it was too late. They all knew that. They could have taken their time.

  They had all the time in the world.

  And the people he loved had none.

&
nbsp; It was all over in a heartbeat. And just as surely as Kevin and Sal had passed away that night, so did Vito. His body may have continued to function, but his spirit had been crushed and mangled. Obliterated.

  Now, Vito waited. And waited. It seemed like forever, so long in fact that he began to wonder if something awful had happened, if the cut was something more, or if they had found something else. You’re being silly. Yet he couldn’t help but recall the doctor emerging from the swinging doors that terrible night and coming toward him, her face grim. Even before she said a word, he knew. He had stood on weak legs and mumbled, “No. Please, no.”

  She must have said the words, crushing, but he couldn’t recall them. All he could dredge up was Rosalie holding on to him as his legs went out from under him and his world went dark.

  He felt fingers tapping him on the shoulder. Vito looked up, dazed, feeling like he’d just been awakened from a dream. There was, for a split second, this moment of disorientation, of wondering where he was, and then it all sort of shifted into focus.

  Henry stood before him, his thumb looking cartoonishly large, wrapped in clean white gauze. “Are you ready to go back?”

  Vito searched behind Henry, looking for a doctor or a nurse, someone who would explain more, but there was no one. Henry must have seen him looking, because he explained, “There’s nothing to tell. My parents’ insurance covered it. I just need to keep it clean, be careful around knives—duh—stuff like that.”

  “Can you go back to work?”

  “They told me I should take the rest of the night off. But—”

  “Then that’s what you should do.” Vito stood. “Just go home and take it easy. Ro will understand, and you can go back to running the dishwasher tomorrow. No more cutting, of any sort, for you for a little while.” Vito started toward the exit and had taken several steps when he noticed Henry wasn’t following.

  “Where will I go?” The plaintiveness in Henry’s voice caught at Vito’s heart, stopping him in his tracks as surely as if Henry had grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

  Vito turned. “What do you mean?” He looked at Henry and saw the hurt in his face, the simple pain there. It made Vito want to reach out and enfold Henry in an embrace, yet his arms stayed by his sides.

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  “I don’t get it.” Vito put a hand on Henry’s shoulder and pressed. “Sit down.”

  Henry sat—or more like collapsed—into one of the plastic chairs. He stared forward.

  Vito said, “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

  Henry was silent for a long time, so long, in fact, that Vito began to wonder if the kid would ever speak again. At last Henry looked over at him.

  “I’ve been kicked out.”

  “What?” Vito asked, confused.

  “Can we go outside? I don’t like talking with all these people around.” Without waiting for an answer, Henry stood and began walking once more toward the exit doors. Vito hurried to catch up with him.

  Henry said nothing for the longest time. In fact, he didn’t even look back to make sure Vito was following. Vito watched as he moved along a side street adjacent to the hospital, seeming as though he were looking for something. At last he must have found what he was looking for, and it was none too fancy, but it did offer some privacy.

  Henry plopped down in a plexiglass bus shelter and waited, presumably, for Vito to show up. Vito sat beside him and, side by side, they watched as the sky grew even darker as rumbling clouds moved in.

  Funny how it always seemed they ended up in a bus shelter.

  The sky began to spit raindrops as they sat there in silence, listening to the beat of the drops as they grew louder and more frequent, until they were coming one after the other, fast and furious, and filling the night air with that scent peculiar to summer rain, fresh.

  “So are you gonna tell me what you meant back there?”

  Henry stared at Vito for a long time, his face unreadable in the shadows. Vito was grateful for the rain because it helped ensure they might be alone for a little while longer and Henry would at last say what was on his mind.

  “My parents—my dad, really—threw me out tonight.”

  “Why?”

  Henry regarded the wet ground before him for a long time and then lifted his hand to stare at his thumb, as if wondering how it got there, on the end of his arm. “It’s an old story. My dad found out I’m gay.” Henry laughed, though there was no mirth in it, and he looked over at Vito out of the corner of his eye.

  Vito supposed he was gauging his reaction. What was there, Vito wondered, to truly gauge, though? Although they had never come out to each other, it should have been obvious without saying on which side their bread was buttered, so to speak. Vito laughed at the metaphor.

  “What’s funny?” Henry asked and then nodded, a grim smile creasing his features. “Oh, I get it. That I told my dad I was gay when it’s something that’s probably obvious to the whole world. Except me, of course. My mom knew right away. She didn’t register even the tiniest bit of surprise.” Henry laughed again. “Here I’ve been, walking around thinking I had this big secret, when all along, everyone around me knew and had been wondering when I’d fess up.” Henry paused for a long time, as though he were thinking. “Everyone but Dad, of course, the incomparably macho Tank Appleby. He had this image in his mind of his son, and I think it ripped him to shreds to realize I wasn’t that guy, that creature created in his image.” Henry hung his head, played with a bit of sodden newspaper on the ground with the toe of his shoe.

  Vito said, “If it helps, I didn’t know you were gay.” He paused, considering if he wanted to say what was queued up in his mind to announce next. He went for it. “Although I hoped you were.”

  Henry lifted his head and smiled, this time genuinely. “You did?”

  Vito nodded, and letting that little bit of information out made his heart feel lighter. “Yeah.” He gnawed at his lower lip, wondering if he had opened a Pandora’s box.

  “Why?” Henry wondered. “Why did you hope?”

  Vito shook his head. “That’s a conversation for later. I need to figure out what to do with you and get myself back to work. Ro is probably going nuts in the kitchen, and I’ve been gone too long already.”

  “Just wait a second. Let me tell you what else is going on.”

  And Henry launched into it as Vito sat back, listening and doing his best not to interrupt as the kid spilled out his obviously painful and very recent upheaval in his personal life. His discovery of his mother’s affair, how his best friend had exploited him sexually, and of course, how his father had abandoned him when he needed his family the most.

  By the time he finished, Vito realized he was caught up in a web from which there would be no extricating himself, unless he had no heart. Henry, Vito could tell, was trying hard not to cry, staring resolutely ahead while the tears glistened in his eyes.

  The stoic part of Vito, the he-who-would-not-be-hurt-again part, tried to put the brakes on what he would say next. And at that Vito failed miserably, because his heart, all during Henry’s recounting of what the last couple of days had been like for him, was being touched again and again, laid open and vulnerable.

  So he said it. “You got no place to go, kid?” Vito smiled. “Sorry. Henry. If you need a place to stay, you can stay with me for a bit.” He sighed, feeling as though he had betrayed himself and the defenses he had put so carefully in place over the last year or so were crumbling. But he also was feeling a sense of relief, of letting go. His caring nature would not be denied. “Just for a bit. Your dad will come around. You’ll see.” Vito didn’t feel like he was just mouthing the words. He was a veteran of being in the closet. Although he had never fit in its shadows and regret, he had nonetheless been grateful for his days of hiding, not because they had given him marriage to Angela, who had disappeared from his life when he came out, but because they had given him his son, Salvatore. And even though Sal was gone from his l
ife in a real sense, he would never be gone from his heart. As painful as the memory of the boy was, Vito realized he would always be grateful for it. “He’ll see. You’re family,” Vito said, hoping the words would prove to be true in Henry’s case. He didn’t want to see the boy lose his family, not at such a tender age. “Family is family.”

  “Really? I can stay with you?” Henry stared at him with something akin to wonder.

  Vito chuckled. “You find that so surprising?”

  And Henry chuckled right back. “Why yes, I do, as a matter of fact. You’re always such a hardass.”

  Vito felt touched in spite of the words, honest as they were. Henry didn’t say them to be cutting but because they were true. And there was real, scary affection there.

  Vito didn’t question what he did next. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have done it. But he turned and pulled Henry into his arms. And he realized, holding Henry close, that he wasn’t holding a kid, a boy, but another man, and the feeling was both strange and wonderful. It had been so long. Henry’s head dropped to Vito’s chest, and Vito stroked the silky wheat of Henry’s hair, comforting. He could smell the scent of eucalyptus in Henry’s hair and something else—something unidentifiable—that Vito could only define as essence of Henry. He breathed it in deeply. Henry let go and sobbed, and they stayed clenched together for a very long time, until the rain slowed to a drizzle and a young woman, dressed in shorts and a Cubs T-shirt, a ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap, stood just outside the bus shelter and grinned nervously at the pair of them, as though asking permission to come inside.

  Vito extricated himself from Henry’s embrace and sat up straighter. “Sorry,” he whispered to the young woman. “My friend here has had some bad news. You can come in.”

  Silently she entered and sat down, keeping a careful distance away. She pulled out her phone and began tapping at its screen.

  Henry stayed close, and he whispered in Vito’s ear, “Not all the news was bad.”