by John Irving
The first time they met, the cook couldn't look at her--it was the same way he had treated (still treated) Danny's aunt Filomena. "I should never have shown you your mother's photographs," Dominic said, when Danny told him he was marrying Katie.
I suppose I should have married some nice fat person! Daniel Baciagalupo found himself thinking, instead of working ahead on the chapter he was writing.
But the war in Vietnam would drag on, and on; Nixon would win the '68 election by promising voters an end to the war, but the war would continue until 1975. On April 23, 1970, issuing his own executive order, President Nixon put an end to the 3-A paternity deferment for new fathers--if the child was conceived on or after that date. In the last five years of the war, another 23,763 U.S. soldiers would be killed, and Daniel Baciagalupo would finally come to realize that he should have thanked Katie Callahan for saving his life.
"So what if she was a serial baby maker for draft dodgers," Ketchum would write to Danny. "She saved your ass, sure as shit. And I wasn't kidding--I would have chopped off your right hand to spare you getting your balls blown off, if she hadn't saved you. A finger or two, anyway."
But that April night in '67, when he kept trying to write in the rain in Iowa City, Daniel Baciagalupo preferred to think that it was his two-year-old, little Joe, who'd saved him.
Probably no one could have saved Katie. Many years later, Daniel Baciagalupo would read Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties, a memoir by the fiction writer Robert Stone. "Life had given Americans so much by the mid-sixties that we were all a little drunk on possibility," Stone would write. "Things were speeding out of control before we could define them. Those of us who cared most deeply about the changes, those who gave their lives to them, were, I think, the most deceived."
Well, that certainly rang true for Katie Callahan, Danny would think, when he read that passage. But that book by Robert Stone wouldn't be written in time to save Katie. So she wasn't looking for protection, and she couldn't be saved, but--in addition to her looks, which were both wanton and seemingly underage--no small part of her appeal, and what made her most desirable to Danny, was that Katie was a renegade. (She also had the edginess of a sexual deserter; you never knew what she would do next, because Katie didn't know, either.)
"SIT DOWN, MICHAEL, SIT DOWN--eat something!" old Polcari had kept urging Mr. Leary, but the agitated Irishman was too worked up to eat. He had a beer, and then a glass or two of red wine. Poor Mr. Leary couldn't look at Carmella Del Popolo, Danny knew, without imagining that spade-shaped elf's goatee she'd possibly left unshaven in her left armpit. And when Dominic limped off to the kitchen to bring Mr. Leary a slice of the English teacher's favorite Sicilian meat loaf, Danny Baciagalupo, the writer-in-progress, saw the old owl looking at his dad's limp with new and startled eyes. Maybe a bear did that to the cook's foot! Mr. Leary might have been thinking; maybe there really had been a three-or four-hundred-pound Indian woman whose hair had hung below her waist!
There was one other thing Mr. Leary had lied about to Exeter--the part about these immigrants being prone to exaggeration. Hadn't Mr. Leary said that the Baciagalupo boy was "unlike the rest"? In the area of writerly exaggeration, Daniel Baciagalupo was a born exaggerator! And Danny was still at it on that rainy night in Iowa City, though he was sorely distracted; he was still a little bit in love with Katie Callahan, too. (Danny was only beginning to understand what his father had meant by the color he'd called lethal blue.)
How did that Johnny Cash song go? He'd first heard it six or seven years ago, Danny was guessing.
Oh, I never got over those blue eyes,
I see them everywhere.
More distractions, the writer thought; it was as if he were determined to physically remove himself (to detach himself) from that night in Vicino di Napoli with dear Mr. Leary.
It had taken Mr. Leary a third or fourth glass of red wine, and most of the meat loaf, before he was brave enough to take the pearl-gray envelope out of his inside jacket pocket. From across the table, Danny spotted the crimson lettering; the fifteen-year-old knew what Exeter's school colors were.
"And it's all boys, Dominic," the writer could still hear Mr. Leary saying. The old English teacher had indicated, with a nod of his head, the attractive Calogero girl (Danny's older cousin Elena) and her overripe friend Teresa DiMattia. Those girls were all over Danny whenever the after-school busboy was trying to change into his black busboy pants back in the kitchen.
"Give Danny some privacy, girls," Tony Molinari would tell them, but they wouldn't let up with their ceaseless vamping. In addition to dear Mr. Leary, maybe Danny had those girls to thank for his dad's decision to let him go to Exeter.
The hard parts to write about were the tears in his father's eyes when he said, "Well, Daniel, if it's a good school, like Michael says, and if you really want to go there--well, I guess Carmella and I can come visit you there on occasion, and you can come home to Boston on the occasional weekends." His dad's voice had broken on the occasion and occasional words, Daniel Baciagalupo would remember on that rainy night when he absolutely could not write--but he kept trying to--in Iowa City.
Danny remembered, too, how he'd gone off to the back of the kitchen at Vicino di Napoli, so that his father wouldn't see him start to cry--by then Carmella was crying, too, but she was always crying--and Danny took a little extra time in the kitchen to wet a dishcloth. Unobserved by Mr. Leary, who was overly fond of red wine, Danny wiped clean the back of his teacher's trenchcoat. The chalk-white O' had been easy to erase, easier to erase than the rest of that evening.
Danny would never forget lying in his bedroom later that night, in the Wesley Place apartment, hearing his dad cry and cry--with Carmella crying, too, as she tried to comfort him.
Finally, young Dan had knocked on the wall between their bedrooms. "I love you! And I'll come home a lot--every weekend I can!"
"I love you!" his dad had blubbered back.
"I love you, too!" Carmella had called.
Well, he couldn't write that scene--he could never get it right, Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking.
The chapter titled "Going Away to School" was part of the twenty-five-year-old writer's second novel. He had finished his first novel at the end of his first year in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he'd spent much of his second and final year revising it. He had been lucky enough, in his senior year at the University of New Hampshire, to have one of the writers-in-residence in the English department introduce him to a literary agent. And his first novel was bought by the first publisher the book was sent to. It would be several years before Daniel Baciagalupo would realize how fortunate he'd been. Possibly, no other student graduating from the Writers' Workshop that year already had a novel accepted for publication. It had made Danny the envy of some other students. But he hadn't made many friends among those students; he was one of the few who was married and had a child, so he'd not been a regular at the parties.
Danny had written to Ketchum about the book. He hoped that the logger would be among the first to read it. The novel wouldn't be published until December of '67, or maybe not until the New Year, and though it had a northern New Hampshire setting, Daniel Baciagalupo assured Ketchum and his dad that they weren't in it. "It's not about either of you, or about me--I'm not ready for that," he'd told them.
"No Angel, no Jane?" Ketchum had asked; he'd sounded surprised, or perhaps disappointed.
"It's not autobiographical," Danny had told them, and it wasn't.
Maybe Mr. Leary would have called the novel "rather remote," had that dear man been alive to read it, but Mr. Leary had passed away. Thinking of that Exeter-letter afternoon in Vicino di Napoli, as Daniel Baciagalupo was, he remembered that old Giuse Polcari had died, too. The restaurant itself had moved twice--first to Fleet Street, then to North Square (where it was now)--and Tony Molinari and Paul Polcari took turns at being the maitre d', thus giving themselves a break from the kitchen. Dominic (with his limp) was not maitred' material, though he s
ubbed as the first or principal chef, and Danny's dad also took turns at the pizza-chef position--whenever Paul Polcari was the maitre d'. Carmella, as before, was the most sought-after waitress in the place; there were always a couple of younger women under her supervision.
In those summers he was home from Exeter and UNH--that is, until he married Katie--Danny had worked as a waiter at Vicino di Napoli, and he would sub as the pizza chef when Paul needed a night off, or when his dad did. If he hadn't become a writer, Daniel Baciagalupo could have been a cook. That rainy night in Iowa, when the second novel wasn't going so well, and the first novel wasn't yet published, Danny was in a low enough mood to imagine that he might end up being a cook after all. (If the writing didn't work out, at least he could cook.)
As for the upcoming academic year, Danny already had a job--teaching creative writing, and some other English courses, at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. He had never heard of the college before he'd applied for the job, but with a first novel being published by Random House and an M.F.A. from a prestigious writing program like Iowa's--well, Danny was going to be a college teacher. The young writer was happy about returning to New England. He'd missed his dad, and Carmella--and, who knows, he might actually get to see more of Ketchum. Danny hadn't seen Ketchum but once since that terrible April Sunday when the boy and his dad had fled from Twisted River.
Ketchum had shown up in Durham when Danny was starting his freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. The veteran logger was in his mid-forties by then, and he'd come to Danny's dorm with a gruff announcement: "Your dad tells me you never learned how to drive on a real road."
"Ketchum, we didn't have a car in Boston--we sold the Chieftain the same week we arrived--and you don't have any time to take driving lessons at a place like Exeter," Danny explained.
"Constipated Christ!" Ketchum said. "A college kid who can't get a driver's license is no one I want to be associated with!"
Ketchum then taught Danny how to drive his old truck; those were hard lessons for a young man whose driving experience, heretofore, had been with automatic transmission on the haul roads around Twisted River. For the week or more that Ketchum was in Durham, he lived in his truck--"just like the wanigan days," the woodsman said. The parking authorities at UNH twice gave Ketchum parking tickets when the logger was sleeping in the back of his truck. Ketchum gave the tickets to Danny. "You can pay these," Ketchum told the young man. "The driving lessons are free." It upset Danny that he hadn't seen the woodsman but once in seven years. Now it had been six more years.
How can you not see someone as important to you as that? Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking in the Iowa spring rain. More perplexing, his father had not seen Ketchum once in thirteen years. What was the matter with them? But half of Danny's mind was still unfocused--lost in the run-amuck chapter he was blundering about in.
THE YOUNG WRITER had jumped ahead to his family's first meeting with Mr. Carlisle, the scholarship person at Exeter--once again in Vicino di Napoli. Maybe Danny also had Carmella to thank for getting him into the academy, because Mr. Carlisle had never laid eyes on anyone quite like Carmella--not in Exeter, New Hampshire, surely--and the smitten man must have thought, If the Baciagalupo kid doesn't get into Exeter, I might never see this woman again!
Mr. Carlisle would be crushed that Carmella wasn't with Danny when the boy first visited the prep school. Dominic didn't make the trip, either. How could they? In Boston, March 17 wasn't only St. Patrick's Day. (The young Irish puking green beer in the streets was an annual embarrassment to Mr. Leary.) It was also Evacuation Day, a big deal in the North End, because in 1774 or 1775--Danny could never remember the correct year; actually, it was 1776--the artillery was set up in the Copps Hill Burying Ground to escort the British ships out of Boston Harbor. You got a day off from school on Evacuation Day, and on Bunker Hill Day, if you lived in Boston.
That year, 1957, Evacuation Day had come on a Sunday. Monday was the school holiday, and Mr. Leary had taken Danny on the train to Exeter. (The Evacuation Day holiday was an impossible day for Dominic and Carmella to be away from the restaurant.) The writer's unfocused mind had once more jumped ahead to that train ride to Exeter with Mr. Leary--and what would be their first look at the venerable academy. Mr. Carlisle had been a most welcoming host, but it must have killed him not to see Carmella.
And despite his promise to come home a lot--every weekend he could--Danny wouldn't do that. He rarely came home to Boston on his Exeter weekends--maybe twice a term, tops, and then he would meet his Exeter friends on a Saturday night in Scollay Square, usually to see the strippers at the Old Howard. You had to fake your age, but that was easy; they let the kids in most nights. You just had to be respectful to the ladies. On one of those nights at the Old Howard, Danny ran into his former English teacher. That was a sad night. For Mr. Leary, who loved Latin, it was an errare humanum est night--a "to err is human" night, for both the revered teacher and his prize student. Talk about jumping ahead! He would have to write about that unhappy night (or some version of it) one day, Daniel Baciagalupo supposed.
His first novel was dedicated to Mr. Leary. Because of the Irishman's love of Latin, Danny had written:
MICHAEL LEARY,
IN MEMORIAM
It was from Mr. Leary that he'd first heard the phrase in medias res. Mr. Leary had praised young Dan's writing by saying that, "as a reader," he liked how Danny often began a narrative in the middle of the story rather than at the chronological beginning.
"What's that called--is there a name for it?" the boy had innocently asked.
Mr. Leary had answered: "I call it in medias res, which in Latin means 'in the middle of things.'"
Well, that was kind of where he was at this moment in his life, Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking. He had a two-year-old son, whom he'd inexplicably not named after his father; he'd lost his wife, and had not yet met another woman. He was struggling to begin a second novel while the first one was not yet published, and he was about to go back to New England to his first noncooking, not-in-a-kitchen job. If that wasn't in medias res, Daniel Baciagalupo thought, what was?
And, continuing in Latin, when Danny had first gone to Exeter, he'd gone with Mr. Leary, who was with the boy in loco parentis--that is, "in the place of a parent."
Maybe that was why the first novel was dedicated to Mr. Leary. "Not to your dad?" Ketchum would ask Danny. (Carmella would ask the young writer the same question.)
"Maybe the next one," he would tell them both. His father never said anything about the dedication to Mr. Leary.
Danny got up from his desk to watch the rain streaking his windows in Iowa City. He then went and watched Joe sleeping. The way the chapter was going, the writer thought that he might as well go to bed, but he generally stayed up late. Like his dad, Daniel Baciagalupo didn't drink anymore; Katie had cured him of that habit, which was not a story he wanted to think about on a night when his writing wasn't working. He found himself wishing that Ketchum would call. (Hadn't Ketchum said they should talk?)
Whenever Ketchum called from those faraway phone booths, time seemed to stop; whenever he heard from Ketchum, Daniel Baciagalupo, who was twenty-five, usually felt that he was twelve and leaving Twisted River all over again.
One day, the writer would acknowledge this: It was not a coincidence when the logger called on that rainy April night. As usual, Ketchum called collect, and Danny accepted the call. "Fucking mud season," Ketchum said. "How the hell are you?"
"So you're a typist now," Danny said. "I'm going to miss your pretty handwriting."
"It was never my handwriting," Ketchum told him. "It was Pam's. Six-Pack wrote all my letters."
"Why?" Danny asked him.
"I can't write!" Ketchum admitted. "I can't read, either--Six-Pack read all your letters aloud to me, yours and your dad's."
This was a devastating moment for Daniel Baciagalupo; as the young writer would think of it later, it was right up there with his wife leaving him, but it
would have more serious consequences. Danny thought of how he'd poured out his heart to Ketchum, of everything he'd written to the man--not to mention what Ketchum had to have told Pam, because it was obviously Six-Pack, not Ketchum, who'd replied. This meant that Six-Pack knew everything!
"I thought my mom taught you to read," Danny said.
"Not really," Ketchum replied. "I'm sorry, Danny."
"So now Pam is typing? Danny asked. (This was truly hard to imagine; there'd not been a single typo in the typed letters both Danny and his dad had received from Ketchum.)
"There's a lady I met in the library--she turned out to be a schoolteacher, Danny. She typed the letters for me."
"Where's Six-Pack?" Danny asked.
"Well, that's kind of the problem," Ketchum told him. "Six-Pack moved on. You know how that is," he added. Ketchum knew all about Katie moving on--there was no more to say about it.
"Six-Pack left you?" Danny asked.
"That's not the problem," Ketchum answered. "I'm not surprised she left me--I'm surprised she stayed so long. But I'm surprised that she's moved in with the cowboy," Ketchum added. "That's the problem."
Both Danny and his dad knew that Carl wasn't a constable anymore. (They also knew there was no more town of Twisted River; it had burned to the ground, and it had been a ghost town before it burned.) Carl was now a deputy sheriff of Coos County.
"Are you saying Six-Pack will tell the cowboy what she knows?" Danny asked Ketchum.
"Not immediately," Ketchum answered. "She has no reason to do me any dirt--or to do you and your dad any harm, as far as I know. We parted on good enough terms. It's what'll happen to her when Carl beats her up, because he will. Or when he throws her out, because he won't keep her for long. You haven't seen Six-Pack in a while, Danny--she's losing her looks something wicked."
Daniel Baciagalupo was counting to himself. He knew that Ketchum and Six-Pack were the same age, and that they both were the exact same age as Carl. When he got to fifty, Danny wrote the number down--that was how old they were. He could imagine that Six-Pack Pam's looks were going, and that the cowboy would one day kick her out. Carl would definitely beat her, even though the deputy sheriff had stopped drinking.
