All This Talk of Love

by Christopher Castellani

  Frankie believes in paying his dues, in serving the process, in hard work as the most potent antidote to bitterness. Simultaneously he indulges in the fantasy that Annalise Theroux—surely $15,000 richer as of January 20, about to complete her thesis in a warm bath of confidence, if the letter in his backpack says what he thinks it says—will be caught plagiarizing and forced to return her fortune to its rightful owner.

  He boils some water for tea, puts a Stone Roses CD in the changer, closes the dresser drawers left open all day, and kicks off his duck boots. His socks are wet and cold. He adds them to the pile of soggy socks, scarves, and hats from the day before. He is digging through the hall closet for an extra blanket when he hears a voice other than Anita’s through her bedroom door. It’s not a man’s voice.

  He leans against her door, but the floorboards creak, and he steps away. He shouldn’t spy. It’s none of his business. He’s happy for Anita. But what he wouldn’t do for a good look at the girl who’s finally yanked her over to the wild side! Anita herself has never held any attraction for Frankie, but the idea of her tumbling around with another girl on the other side of the wall provides exactly the sort of distraction he’s been hungry for all day. He’s read the theories on this. The titillation is derived from the power dynamic, and it’s all about the male gaze, and blah blah blah, and because of this he’s supposed to fight the desire, but desire—and who doesn’t know this?—is invincible.

  It’s dinnertime, so he boils pastina in milk and tops it with Parmesan cheese and lots of black pepper, a dish his mother used to make when he got home from playing in the snow. The little stars soak up the milk and congeal into a cheesy mush. He eats at the dining room table, with its panoptic view of every door in the apartment, so Anita’s lover can’t escape undetected. He has to clear the table of old newspapers, catalogs, and cardboard boxes, but it’s worth it—or at least it will be worth it when the sapphic beauty emerges.

  So he waits. Instead of calling Prima, instead of diving into the persuasive essays or unearthing the letter, he reads a Globe article from three weeks ago profiling each member of the harem of women who’ve claimed affairs with President Clinton. It seems there is no escape from men in power, gazing. He tries the op-ed section. Boston’s Big Dig, the most ambitious construction project in American history, is many gazillions of dollars overbudget, and according to Ralph Lind of Quincy, Massachusetts, the greed and corruption is yet another index of the imminent collapse of the Great Satan called Taxachusetts, and therefore Mr. Lind will be moving to Arizona. Frankie knows zilch about local politics, and cares even less. His passions reach beyond long-gone America to countries still forming, still salvageable. If someone paid him to write an op-ed piece for the Globe, he would use soaring rents and the citywide ban on happy hour as examples of how blithely citizens collude in their own exploitation.

  Eventually he faces the first of the essays: “To Clone or Not To Clone: Thaaaat Is The Question,” or so Jim Delaney claims.

  Since the dawn of Time, man has longed to reproduce himself. But what happens when there are no fertile women around to satisfy his natural need? Like a Science Fiction movie gone horribly wrong, scientists now have the capacity to create copies of ourselves, and as we speak they are going down a path toward making progenitors not just out of innocent animals like Dolly the Sheep, but out of human beings like you and me.

  In pencil, Frankie circles “Thaaaat.” He puts a wavy line under “as we speak” and “innocent animals.” A question mark over “progenitors.” Between this intro and the final sentence is a journey of only three double-spaced pages, but it might as well be a sea of quicksand. Jim Delaney seems like a nice kid, not unlike Ray Savage, the jock from Bali, and not stupid. He deserves Frankie’s hard labor. Frankie can rescue him from the wrath of a future professor—Dr. Birch, for one—who would take an essay as clunky and unsophisticated as this, cross out entire sentences, write, “NO!” beside them with a red Sharpie, and crush any budding romance with words Jim might be exploring.

  “I can’t waste my time on the fixer-uppers,” Birch has said to Frankie. “A kid’s got to at least have good bones. A solid foundation. A window of insight here and there. That’s all I ask. Leave the rest to physics and engineering. It’s a mercy killing, really.”

  Is he crazy for missing her?

  She used to arrange her naked body on top of his, rest her chin on his shoulder, and recite Hopkins. “Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here / Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion / Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!”

  In contrast: the last time he saw Kelly Anne McDonald, she read him letters her sixth graders had written to Anne Frank.

  He’s losing focus. He nukes his tea and adds honey. From Anita’s room a Joni Mitchell CD starts up. Court and Spark. The volume is raised. Still no one has emerged from the room. Frankie holds Jim Delaney’s essay at arm’s length, reads to the end of the first paragraph, rubs his forehead in agitation, puts it down. Looks at his backpack, looks away.

  He dials Prima’s number from the kitchen extension, stretches the cord into the hall so he can sit on the floor and lean against the wall. From this angle, he can see enough of the apartment to detect any disturbance. He hasn’t spoken to his sister for over a month, since the uneventful Christmas Day dinner she hosted at her house.

  Her phone rings and rings; then the machine picks up. Perfect. “Hey, Sis,” says Frankie. “It’s me, returning your call. No need to call back unless—”

  “Frankie!” Prima says.

  “Oh, you’re screening.”

  “Of course I’m screening. Every other call’s somebody selling something. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Those people don’t call hovels.”

  “I must be on a list. Do yourself a favor: don’t rack up huge mortgage and credit card bills.”

  “So far, so good,” says Frankie. He glances down the still-empty hallway. “So what’s up? My housemate said you have a work-related question. I’m superbusy tonight, but . . . are you, like, looking for a job or something?”

  “I have a job,” says Prima, with a defensive laugh. “It’s called raising four sons, cooking six nights a week for my husband, and babysitting two senior citizens.” She’s on a cordless and, from the jumpy fuzziness of the reception, seems to be running laps around the house. “And you know what? There’s no better job in the world.”

  “Gotcha,” says Frankie. God, Birch would despise his sister. Kelly Anne would not. He’s been thinking in these comparative terms lately, even though he envisions no scenario in which either woman will meet his family. Frankie has never brought a girl home to his parents, let alone to Prima. He doesn’t see the point until—unless—he meets a girl he might consider staying with for a few decades, and even then he wouldn’t introduce her to anyone until they’d lived together awhile. No use everybody falling for her, or cutting her down for not being good enough, before he’s had a chance to do so himself. He doesn’t understand people who parade their entanglements before their families like it’s a beauty pageant, seeking their ratings and recommendations. Love, like art, has no use for committees. If your instinct’s not an accurate enough guide, you’ve got some growing up to do.

  “It’s your work I wanted to ask about,” Prima says. “I’m wondering what your schedule’s like in April. You have off Easter week, right?”

  “We get a week break around then, yeah. It doesn’t always line up exactly. Why?”

  “You know the exact dates?”

  “I can look them up. Why?”

  She sighs heavily, then gets all fake jaunty. “Because I was doing some research, and you know what? I was totally wrong about going to Italy in August! Everyone I talk to tells me it’s just too darn hot. So I thought, why not Easter? Better weather, all the churches decked out with flowers, less crowded with tourists.”

  “This Easter, as in three months from now?”

  “Y
eah. The boys are off school. Well, Syracuse’s schedule doesn’t quite match up, but whatever. Ryan can miss a few days.”

  “I thought the tickets were nonrefundable, nonchangeable, engraved by God on indestructible stone tablets. And, um, isn’t the whole thing off, anyway? Has something happened in the past few weeks to change that? Because if so, Mom hasn’t mentioned a word to me—”

  “Let me worry about Mom.”

  “It’s not a minor detail that she’d rather die than go.”

  “Honestly, Frankie, you take her drama too seriously. I’ll worry about her. Just trust me.”

  “I need Easter week to work on my dissertation,” he says. “I have plans to go down to Providence and New Haven to use their libraries.” This is a lie, one he’s worried he’s used before on Prima to get out of some other family event.

  “You can’t go to the library some other time?”

  “You have no respect for what I do,” Frankie says.

  “Come on, Frankie, that’s not fair. And not true at all. Honestly? I don’t really understand what you do. But I figured, you work at a university, and universities get spring break off.” There’s commotion in the background of her house, dishes being washed or trash taken out. “Listen. I don’t tell you this enough, but you’re the smartest guy I know.”

  “You must run with a pretty dim crowd.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “OK.”

  “I want us to be closer.”

  “OK.”

  “I don’t want us to always be fighting. It makes me sad. We should be on the same side.”

  “OK.”

  “Even though you’re away. We need to talk more. I want to come up at some point. Me and Patrick. Or me and Tom. Or just me. I’ve never been to Boston.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Frankie says. Then he regrets it. There’s a defeated wistfulness in Prima’s voice that he can’t quite read. Nostalgia? Most of their lives they’ve been polite strangers, like coworkers who clash on every issue but seek each other out to sit with at the office picnic. Lately, though, their clashing has felt sharper, more charged. Birch would argue this has to do with Tony, but Frankie blames it more on millennial anxiety. Everyone’s on edge as they stumble into this jumpy new century. “That could be all right,” he says. “There’s a lot to see here. Hey! Why don’t we just make Boston the big family trip? It’d be cheaper and easier all around.”

  “Boston?”

  He finds himself sincerely excited by this possibility. He’s never had the opportunity to show anyone around his city, walk them down the Freedom Trail, explore the historic sites like a tourist. He’s never been to the Cape, but the beach cottages there have to be less expensive than their Italian equivalents, even in August. “Mom would love that, don’t you think? She’d have no argument.”

  Again that heavy sigh, and the attempt to power through it with levity. “It’s sweet of you,” Prima says. “But you don’t really want us invading your turf. We’d drive you crazy.”

  “I wouldn’t call this my turf. And I’m asking you to invade it,” he says. “I’d . . . like you to. Really and sincerely.”

  “It not the same.”

  “Because it’s not your idea. Because you won’t be in charge of every detail.”

  “Jesus,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re so hard on me.”

  Because you have lots of plans, Frankie thinks, but no ambition. No big ideas. Look at the Al Di Là, almost fifty years strong, built from nothing; look at his own quest to ensure that his scholarship not only outlasts him but influences future generations. There’s honor there. He’s proud of his father, and of himself. The Grasso women, though, sadly, have not transcended. Test their blood: it’s half tradition, half fear. Maddalena and Prima were taught to maintain, to carry on, to beautify—not to create or renovate. (Look at their living rooms: sterile as museums, plastic on the sofas, Capodimonte figurines dusted daily.) No one encouraged them to build or look beyond or even look around. He respects his mother for making the best of her life in a new country, a new language, with a stranger for a husband, but he does not respect Prima for the choices she’s made. How does she know she’s got the best job in the world if it’s the only one she’s ever tried? “I’m sorry, Prima,” he says, because he can’t tell her any of this.

  “Decide about Easter,” she says. “I have to know now. I need you to be aware that we’re all going at Easter—Mom, Dad, Tom, the boys—with or without you. There’s a reason.”

  “So much for making sure it fit my schedule. I swear, Prima—”

  Then she tells him her reason. But it’s a lie.

  Afterward, Frankie sits on the kitchen floor. It’s not quite eleven o’clock, but he calls his mother, anyway, right away, and she’s no different, she’s fine. Better than fine. She’s just back from a lesson at the studio, and Arlene is over for a glass of wine. She ignores Arlene and talks with Frankie for twenty minutes. They’ve talked for at least twenty minutes every night since he left Wilmington the day before New Year’s Eve, and not once has she given him a single reason to believe the lie that Prima told him. She has no evidence from a doctor. She hasn’t discussed the issue with their father. All she has is her own paranoid assumptions and some bullshit she read in Redbook. So what if she put a carton of milk in the wrong cabinet? So what if she can’t find the right word every once in a while? He’s furious with Prima, with her cruel attempt to exert control over their family. Maybe if she had something of her own in her life and didn’t live vicariously through her kids and her husband, she wouldn’t create problems where problems didn’t exist. Frankie wonders whether it’s Prima’s mind, not their mother’s, that’s starting to crack.

  The front door slamming shut breaks him from the riot of fears and speculation in his head. He scrambles to his feet, slides down the hall in his tube socks, and makes it to the porch in time to see a bundled-up person of unidentifiable gender trudging toward campus through the blizzard. The gait of Anita’s lover is neither manly nor womanly; it is the gait of a cold person, arms folded across the chest, head bowed to the horizontally falling snow. Curse these neighbors and their darkened porch lights! Better yet: curse Prima for distracting him, for putting the wrong ideas in his head. Now they’ll fester there, he knows, for the rest of his life. He’ll never sleep.

  He needs to escape his head. He calls Kelly Anne, but she doesn’t pick up. He wanders the apartment, which gets smaller and smaller the longer he circles it. He shuts himself in his room and turns the TV on loud. He takes the letter from the front pocket of the backpack and holds it in his left hand. His pants are around his ankles. He’s seen enough of Anita’s lover to imagine an athlete—a soccer player, maybe—showing her new girlfriend the ropes. The TV’s on loud enough to muffle the sound of his mattress creaking. The coach of the soccer team, a solid but still-feminine woman in her early forties, somehow discovers the girls in the bedroom and teaches them both a lesson they’ll never forget. He sustains the fantasy for five minutes, ten, but it’s useless. He can’t get it up.

  He rips open the letter. It’s three sentences long.

  “Though Dr. Carr admired your—”

  “We regret to inform you that, after much—”

  “Christopher Curran—”

  He pads his way out to the dining room table in his wet socks. Jim Delaney’s disaster of an essay stares up at him from the top of a stack of disasters. The words scramble and blur on the page. Chris Curran? Frankie didn’t waste a single second of worry on him. It doesn’t matter. His mind is on fire. There’s only one thing that matters. He calls his mother again, and his own voice on the machine asks him to leave a message, but he can’t speak through his tears. She picks up. “Hello? Hello, Frankie? Is that you?” The last thing he wants is for her to worry about him any more than she already does. If there’s really something wrong with her, it could make her worse. It’s enough to hear her saying, over and over, “Hello? Hello? Frankie? Is that you? I can�
�t hear you.” He listens as long as she stays on the line. She sounds like his mother of always. Then she hangs up. And though he has nowhere to go, he puts on his boots, runs out into the snow, and keeps running.

  LAST YEAR WAS a good one for the Al Di Là, and look: the first two months of 2000 bring double the profits of the same time in 1999, profits so big the managers ambush Antonio all three together to ask for raises. He’s sitting at the front window, linguine carbonara going cold on his plate, when the managers surround him, old Gilberto, Maurizio, and Olindo, each with his reason. They work too many late hours; they are married men with cars to shine and lawns to keep green; they never see their wives and kids and grandkids and girlfriends; they’ve been loyal to Antonio through the tough times; the chain restaurants on 202 pay double for less work.

  Antonio listens, empty fork in hand. A gentleman doesn’t eat in front of his employees.

  “I don’t see how a raise will solve your problems,” he says. “You’ll still work the same hours. Sounds like you want me to hire somebody new. I can do that for less than a raise for each of you.”

  “It’s about respect,” says Maurizio.

  “Let’s put the cards on the table,” says Gilberto, who’s been at the Al Di Là since the day it opened. He almost left in ’86 to open his own place in Baltimore, then changed his mind. He’s the top manager and, along with DiSilvio, the closest thing Antonio has to a brother. “We don’t care so much about the hours. We want the raise.”