All This Talk of Love

by Christopher Castellani

  The train is pulling away from New Haven—site of another famous university at which Frankie will never present a paper on modern psychology and postcolonialism or whatever his dissertation is ultimately about—when a duffel bag falls from the overhead compartment and lands on his head.

  “Oh no, that’s mine!” says a girl behind him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Frankie says, clutching his skull. He picks up the bag, which weighs roughly six tons, and hands it to her. “Are you transporting gold bullion or something?”

  “I’m so sorry,” she says.

  His first thought is that this girl looks like a Bryn Mawr tennis player—silky brown hair in a ponytail, lots of makeup, white mohair sweater. A gold cross hangs from a chain over the fuzzy turtleneck. His second thought is that “bullion” is an extremely dorky word to utter in her presence. “It’s OK,” he says. “I’m still conscious.”

  “Inasmuch as any of us are conscious,” she says as she stuffs the bag back in the overhead.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I noticed you were reading Being and Nothingness.”

  Being and Nothingness, facedown on Frankie’s lap before the duffel-bag bombing, now glares up at him from the floor. The pages are dog-eared, with yellow slips of paper sticking out from the sides. He’s rereading it after some library sleuthing revealed it to be one of Dr. Felix Carr’s sacred texts.

  “We just did that in philosophy. I bet you actually understand it.”

  “I wrote a paper once called ‘For-Itself, In-Itself, By Myself,’ ” he says. “I got a C plus.”

  She’s a senior at Boston College, she tells him, en route to her family’s place outside Philly. In four years of college she’s never missed a holiday, birthday, baptism, confirmation, or wedding. The day she graduates, she’s moving back to find a job as a middle school teacher.

  “What a regrettable era of life,” he says. “Please tell me you’re teaching kids to erase it from their minds.”

  “That’s the thing!” she says, her eyes suddenly silver-dollar wide. “It doesn’t have to be so bad! They’re doing amazing things with that age these days, especially in language arts. Have you read John Gaughan? Or Atwell’s In the Middle?”

  He shakes his head.

  “It’s this new way of teaching where kids write letters to each other and keep journals and publish their stories. Not just spit back spelling words. Kids don’t even sit in rows anymore.”

  “How do they sit?”

  “In pods,” she says.

  “Pods?”

  She laughs. “Group learning and cooperation build self-esteem and make better citizens.”

  “Sister Carmelita used to throw chalk at my face when I got an answer wrong,” Frankie says. “I don’t think self-esteem was her top priority.”

  “And you’re still a good citizen?” she asks.

  “You have me there.”

  They trade Catholic-school stories for a while, him turned backward in his seat, his legs sticking out into the aisle, her leaning forward. Every time someone squeezes by, their knees touch. But she is five years his junior, not to mention a firm believer in the sanctity of the sacraments, and draws her knees back the moment the path clears. I need a girl like you, Frankie thinks. Decent, salt of the earth. Someone who cares about things like the self-esteem of sweaty, hormonal eleven-year-olds. He’s done with sex, anyway. With Birch, he’s had enough to sustain him through the long fallow period sure to be necessary with a girl like this.

  Kelly Anne McDonald is her name. He’s put in mind of Irish fields, of green beer, of luck.

  What I don’t need, he thinks: A selfish careerist, a woman who stands ready to betray me just to preserve her already assured place in the polluted ecosystem of academia. A woman unwilling to take even the slightest (and frankly theoretical) risk if it means a potential threat to her reputation as an evenhanded scholar, a faithful wife. A willing slave to the whims of the body. A corrupter. But that’s what he’s got.

  The holiday week began well. “Dear Francesco Grasso,” began Dr. Lexus’s brief letter, typed on department stationery, left for him yesterday, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, in his campus mailbox. In a spirit of fraternity and camaraderie, Lexus had crossed out “Francesco” with a blue pen and, above it, written “Frankie.” “Thank you for submitting to the 2000 J—— University Dissertation Fellowship. I am pleased to inform you that the selection committee—Professors Arbuckle, Birch, McLean, and Yarrow—has selected your application as one of three to move forward to the final round of consideration. I congratulate you on this significant achievement. As stipulated in the design of the prize, the winner of the fellowship will be chosen by a visiting juror, who will read the finalists’ applications and meet individually with candidates the week of December 13. As you know, this year the visiting juror will be Dr. Felix Carr. Enclosed please find a sign-up sheet for interviews. The winner will be notified no later than January 20. Sincerely,” et cetera.

  Within minutes of having received the letter, Frankie had marked the first interview slot as his first choice and the last slot for his second choice and returned the form to the department secretary. No matter that both slots conflicted with his teaching schedule; it was important to make a strong either initial or final impression. He hadn’t heard of this Dr. Felix Carr, but he’d already made it his top priority to find out all he could about him, read his books, bone up on whatever field he was in. Lexus’s letter didn’t reveal the other two candidates, but he had no doubt Annalise Theroux was one of them. The third candidate was inconsequential because whoever it was had no chance.

  Birch had come through for him after all. In the weeks since their first discussion of the fellowship, she’d promised Frankie that if he had plenty of support on the committee, she’d join in that support. Recognizing her moral failings, she also promised that if a vote came down to him and someone else, she’d choose him.

  It came as no surprise, then, that under the letter from Dr. Lexus was a note from Birch.

  She arrived, as usual, just after one o’clock. Frankie lay waiting for her on his futon, wearing nothing but Dr. Lexus’s letter. “I squeaked through somehow,” he said, taking the letter from its artful arrangement between his legs and waving it at her. “How did this happen, I wonder?”

  “Classy,” she said.

  “Come on,” said Frankie. “Let me have my fun. We’re celebrating. You did the right thing. And if Dr. Felix Carr of Princeton picks me, it can’t possibly reflect on you. You’re free and clear.”

  “That’s true enough, I guess.”

  She was still wearing a lot of clothes, which was rare for her. Frankie felt increasingly silly and confused as each second ticked by and she stood above him, hands on her hips, surveying, in her coat and scarf, how excited he was by Lexus’s decision and their chance to christen it. Then it occurred to him that she might have buyer’s remorse.

  “What?”

  He covered himself with a pillow.

  “No, no,” she said, tossing the pillow aside. She looked from his crotch to his eyes, then back again. “You just keep going, don’t you? You don’t give up.”

  “That’s why you keep me around, I thought,” he said. “Plus, why would I give up now? If I were going to give up, I’d have done it two months ago. Or last year, when you took a hatchet to my introduction . . .”

  “That was the Hindenburg of introductions,” she said. She laughed, and Frankie laughed, too, because she was right and because it was during the protracted and contentious dissection of his introduction that they’d decided to walk down to Elm Street for a glass of wine. It was that glass of wine that led to her first trip to his bedroom.

  “You’ve helped me every step of the way,” he said. He reached for her.

  She remained stiff and unbearably clothed. “Frankie, I have to confess something,” she said. “I’m sure it won’t surprise you, but I have to say it. I won’t feel right if I don’t. I won’t be able to enjoy�
��—she looked down at him again—“today if I don’t.”

  “Jesus,” he said. He got up, pulled on a pair of sweats, and muted the Cure CD, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, that he’d put in especially for this session. His gut already guessed what she was going to tell him, but he stood across from her, arms crossed, until she fessed up.

  “I didn’t vote for you,” she said. “I told you I would, even if the committee was deadlocked, but I didn’t. In fact, there was a deadlock, and I argued for Mary Kessler. You made it to the final three in spite of me. And don’t ask why because I’ve already gone over it.”

  “I’m in third place? You had to debate between me and Mary Kessler?”

  She crossed her arms and looked at him with some defiance. “The uninformed are not permitted to be dismissive. Mary’s doing some really excellent and difficult recovery work with Native American folktales. You don’t cast someone aside because she’s had a few kids in between chapters. That’s what got me riled up, actually. The way the men on the committee—Arbuckle in particular, your new champion—would react whenever her name came up. The sexism of that place—”

  “But it didn’t rile you up that your advisee was floundering in fourth place.”

  “Frankie, we’ve been down this road. It worked out in the end. I made my spirited defense of Mary, they chose you instead, and now we can just let it go. I wanted to tell you, not to launch us into some debate over the relative merit of your work or the absurd biases in English Departments across the land, but because I don’t want to keep any secrets from you. That’s the beauty of what we have here, right? The honesty of it, our flaws on display? You know what lying does to me.”

  She’d expressed her discomfort with lying before, as a way of explaining her unique (and, to Frankie’s mind, primitive) code of morality. She and Frankie had had many discussions about her marriage, which, by Birch’s code, was an honest one simply because she’d never officially lied to her husband. For example, she’d never told Amos she was in the library or grading papers when she was really in Frankie’s bed. When he’d asked, she’d said, “I was in a long session with an advisee,” or “I went for a nice walk,” or whatever could technically be considered true. Speaking the truth and lying at the same time had both thrilled and shamed her, she said to Frankie, and she expressed gratitude that Amos rarely asked questions, rarely concerned himself with the details of her weekdays on the campus they shared. He had no reason. They spent plenty of time together. They drove in and home together from Chestnut Hill on the days she taught, and on the weekends they had their Vineyard house, and fund-raisers for various causes, and lots and lots of hours to sit beside each other and read. After twelve years, she was as demanding of Amos in bed as she was of Frankie, a fact she liked to brag about whenever Frankie acted “all lazy and worn out” in the afternoon. It was Birch’s code, which allowed her to keep her lives with Frankie and Amos separate but still “honest,” if not equal.

  Yesterday, too, he was so relieved to make it to the final fellowship round, and so eager to celebrate a rare victory, that he willed himself not to blow her confession, or her blind spot when it came to the defense of women, out of proportion. Instead he nodded, unwrapped her scarf, unzipped her jacket, grabbed her big, chunky belt, and pulled her to him. Other than her revelation that the third finalist was none other than Chris Curran, the pothead, nothing more was said.

  It was after she’d gone, as he lay naked on his rough sheets, the late-afternoon skies already darkening, that his fourth-placeness settled on him like a fine layer of dust. He did some accounting: fourth place in his third-rate department, second place behind Amos in Birch’s attentions, and second place behind Tony in his family’s affections. In only one competition would Frankie be declared champion: the marathon of self-pity. And yet—what did Birch say? You just keep going, don’t you? She admired him for that. He admired himself for that. He was not Tony. Whatever design flaw had existed in his brother’s brain did not exist in his.

  And now there is Kelly Anne McDonald, his new friend on this wobbly trek down the Eastern Seaboard, who has a great respect for what she calls Frankie’s “interesting perspective on things.” BC people look and talk the same, she says. No one disagrees or is disagreeable. The college is an “orgy of politeness,” she says, without blushing. She’s tried to branch out—to BU, to Harvard—but claims to have no talent for meeting left-of-center people and keeps settling for clones of herself and her current circle.

  Sometime around Trenton, Kelly Anne gives Frankie her phone number and campus address. She still lives in a dorm, though her friends have moved into apartments or sorority houses, because she’s afraid she’ll never get her work done otherwise. Tomorrow she’ll be attending Thanksgiving Mass, and Frankie, a twelve-year veteran of Catholic school, has to admit he didn’t even know there was such a thing. He’d always thought of Thanksgiving as free from religious overtones.

  Her hand is soft and creamy white. He holds it a moment too long as the train approaches Thirtieth Street and they say their good-bye and “we should get togethers.” He enjoys his first sustained gaze at her ass as she drags the bag of gold bullion behind her. She looks back once before stepping off.

  He’s glad Kelly Anne McDonald is not around to see him take the ring out of his nose, replace his Holden Caulfield cap with the Timberland hat Prima gave him for Christmas, drop his bracelets into the front compartment of his backpack, and put on a J.Crew sweater over his Dead Kennedys T-shirt. He now looks as agreeable and cooperative as a kid from BC.

  Though it’s past midnight, the crowd on the train remains thick, having disembarked and replicated itself at each stop for the past six hours. Only a scant few of these people will disappear with Frankie into the vast metropolis of Wilmington, Delaware, or, as his friends used to call it, “the Town Fun Forgot.” On the approach, the view from their smudged windows is the charming oil refineries of Marcus Hook, twinkling and pumping noxious clouds into the air, the stadium-size lots jammed with cars, and the squat downtown office buildings blank and empty as Sunday in Brasília. A good place to raise your kids, they say about this town. A short drive to Philly, New York, Atlantic City, Baltimore, and DC, but without as many “problems,” by which they mean “crime,” by which they mean “blacks.” Everything is postcolonial, even here. He should write a chapter on the neighborhood around St. Anthony’s Church, dominated by Italians for decades, then abandoned for the suburbs. The Grassos are complicit in this narrative, of course, though Frankie has gained some distance from it. He is the first member of his generation of the extended family to live more than thirty miles from Little Italy, to have the luxury of Boston culture at his fingertips—the lectures, the readings, the ghosts of Emerson and Thoreau taking his hand as they cross the common in perfect exhilaration. In this way, he reminds himself, he’s lucky. If he’s even luckier, he can catch the train back Saturday morning instead of Sunday night, ring up Kelly Anne McDonald, and take her to The Battle of Algiers at the Brattle.

  But then, as he struggles to wrench his backpack from between two boxes of anvils in the overhead, he sees his mother and father standing on the platform. They are holding hands, searching every window for a glimpse of their son, relieved, when they find his profile, that Amtrak has delivered him safely home. Their faces say how grateful they are for this silly American holiday that reunites them, how they’re planning every meal they’ll eat this weekend, every visit to his zia and compari in the old neighborhood. The moment he sees them, Frankie knows he will not catch the early train home. He will stay with them until the last possible moment.

  His mother has had her hair frosted and her nails painted pumpkin-orange. His father wears his leather jacket with the sheepskin collar. Frankie embraces him and rests his head for a moment on the fur. His father has grown shorter. The tremor in his arm, noticed in the summer but never discussed, is more pronounced. They bicker over where they parked, which neither one remembers, and how long it’s been since t
hey’ve seen Frankie. His mother smells of Nina Ricci and baby powder. She felt tired for no reason all day, she says, her mind foggy, but now that Frankie’s here, the fog goes away.

  All his life, Frankie’s kept his mother and father from the fog. Antonio denies they planned it that way, but Maddalena has told him many times about the nightgown with the holes in the underarms, the roses. It is one in her extensive repertoire of stories, beginning always with the village boy, Vito Leone, her first love, who romanced her with a bicycle he made from scraps he found lying around three towns. It was Vito who’d rebuilt her parents’ house after the Allied bombing and who would have been her husband if he’d had as much money as Antonio pretended to have. She has no end of Vito stories or memories from Prima’s and Frankie’s childhood, but only a few stories of Antonio. Of Tony she tells no stories at all. She rarely mentions him by name, and sometimes Frankie feels her trying too hard to remind him that he may not have been the first son born in the new country, but he inherited the promise of a great future for the Grassos. The best idea they ever had, his mother likes to say, was to bring Francesco Grasso into the world. Frankie has seen a hundred pictures of Tony, heard his voice on the one audiotape that survives, been reminded many times by his father and Prima of the little boy’s energy and piano playing and love for the Al Di Là, but he can’t summon much love for his brother beyond the theoretical: Without him, I would not exist, is the most he can do.

  “But what about guilt?” Birch likes to ask, but that, too, is theoretical. Once, in response, he quoted Emerson: “In the death of my son . . . I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me . . . It leaves no scar.”

  Birch had looked at him, puzzled. “There’s no colder passage in all of American Literature,” she said.