All the Children Are Home

by Patry Francis

  “What are you saying?” I asked, but deep down, I knew. I thought of the gulf that had opened up between Jimmy and me since I first began to win my own race. Even my growing separation from Ma and Dad. My eyes filled with water.

  Again she was quiet for a few minutes.

  “You know who was at my meet today? Right up in the front row like he’d always been there. Dead center. Watching me like he told me he would.”

  I sat up straight and switched the light on. “You can’t be talking about that guy from when you were little? What was his name—Mr. Dean? It couldn’t have been him. I’m sure he forgot you a long time ago.”

  “The one and only. And he will never forget. You wanna know why?” Again I waited. “Cause I’m the one who knows who he is. Up there in that attic, I saw everything he hides from the world.”

  “But what would he be doing way out there in Springfield? Besides, it’s been so long . . . How could you even recognize him?”

  “Oh, I know him, all right. Just like he knows me. The minute I won the race, it was like my eyes went straight to him—just like that magnet I told you about. He was the only one who wasn’t clapping. And then, when I looked in that direction again, he was gone.”

  Chapter Six

  All Saints

  DAHLIA

  I WAS STANDING BY THE PICTURE WINDOW, WAITING, WHEN THE car pulled up. “You’re never gonna guess who bought Tucker’s store,” I blurted out soon as Louie closed the door.

  “That dump? You might want to ask me if I give a shit first.” He headed for the kitchen, where I could hear the faucet running, the sound of him slugging down his water.

  “Okay, I won’t tell you, then. And I won’t say who he hired to run the deli, either.”

  “Thank heaven for small mercies,” he replied, rinsing out his glass. One of his mother’s sayings.

  Hmph.

  The subject didn’t come up again till after the kids were in bed. “Since when did Tucker’s have a deli?” Louie asked, casual as heck. Like he hadn’t been stewing on it all night. “Packaged bologna, and hot dogs dangling out of his filthy meat case; is that the deli you’re talking about?”

  “Hmm,” I murmured.

  “Well, whoever it is must be a damn fool. They’ll spend more money than the place is worth before the board of health lets ’em even open the door.”

  Another hmm.

  “Be that way, then, Dahlia. Like I said before, it ain’t like I give a shit.”

  Well, the next day who do you think came in busting with the news? “Drove by Tucker’s old store today—just in time to see them hanging the new sign.”

  I lifted my eyebrows, not even dignifying it with a murmur.

  “Joe O’Connor’s really lost his mind this time,” Louie said, referring to our longtime neighbor from the next street. “All those years living with that crazy son of his finally got to him.”

  Zaidie exhaled her disgust into the kitchen, where she was doing homework at the table.

  I set down my mending. “Thought you didn’t give a damn.”

  “I’m telling you, he hasn’t been right since Edna died,” he went on, shaking his head. “First he starts draggin’ poor Crazy Joe to Mass every morning with the old ladies. Now he’s gonna open a store?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Man’s a retired welder, for chrissake. Probably never set foot in a damn market till he lost the wife. Church, either.”

  “Who’s going to look after his boy? That’s what I want to know,” I said, no longer able to hold my peace. “The kid’ll be out wandering the neighborhood getting into God knows what.”

  “Hah. I guess you didn’t hear the best part. Crazy Joe’s gonna work there, too.”

  “You shouldn’t call him that, Dad,” Zaidie finally yelled from the kitchen. “How would you feel—”

  “That’s his name, ain’t it? What do you want me to call him—Crazy Paul?”

  Zaidie slammed her book shut and started upstairs to her room. “You two are hopeless!”

  Normally, Louie wouldn’t have let that pass. Hopeless, am I? Me the one who works fifty hours a week to keep you in fingernail polish and encyclopedias? And I would have taken issue with the fact that she included me in her hopeless category when I hadn’t said a damn word.

  But Louie was too caught up in his story to bother. “You haven’t heard the clincher, Dahlia. You know what he’s calling the place?”

  Before he could tell me, Jimmy slammed through the front door, ushering in a rush of heady spring air. Jools was right behind him.

  Usually it took a court order to get two words out of Jools, but not that day. “The Nothing’s Perfect Market and Deli!” he spat out.

  “Nothing’s Perfect,” Jimmy repeated. “No joke, Ma. Got a sign painted up and everything.” He painted the shape of a rainbow with the flat of his hand.

  I hadn’t seen him in such a good mood since the day Agnes broke a record in the state finals. Even paused to kiss me on the cheek just like he used to. No booze on his breath, either—at least none I picked up.

  The boys were so busy laughing at Joe O’Connor’s foolishness that no one noticed Agnes when she came in the back door. In the past, she would’ve wanted to know what all the chuckling was about, but ever since the state finals, she’d been acting funny. Quiet. Maybe the swimming was too much pressure. Right away, she started laying the table for supper.

  Without needing to ask, she set a plate for Jools in Jon’s old spot. Somehow it always made us feel better when the chair was occupied—as if just for that one meal we were whole again. It didn’t even matter that it was the likes of Jools Bousquet taking his seat.

  The jokes continued through dinner, starting with Jimmy. “Might as well call the place Lousy Sandwiches and Moldy Cheese.”

  “You say your meat’s rotten?” Jools piped in, more animated than I’d ever seen him. “Slipped on a spill in the aisle and broke your leg? Hey, nothing’s perfect.”

  “At least they’re honest,” Jimmy said. “Imagine Crazy Joe workin’ the deli? Probably be razor blades in the pickles.”

  “Joe Jr.’s a grown man. Older than you, Jimmy. And he’s got a mental illness,” Zaidie said, speaking up for the first time. “How would you feel—”

  Jimmy used to say you could put those four words on her tombstone, drawing a crescent with his hand the way he had with Joe O’Connor’s sign.

  “Not a bad idea,” Zaidie had said in return. “Might be a good question for the living to ask themselves when they walk through a graveyard.”

  This time, though, Jimmy was in a more conciliatory mood. “You’re right, Z. Sorry.” But then, he looked at Jools and they broke up all over again.

  “Just don’t eat the pickles, right?” Jools said, lowering his head before he, too, apologized to Zaidie.

  Even Louie emitted a grunt that faintly resembled a laugh.

  Finally, I cleared my throat. “Ahem. You might not think it’s so funny when you hear who’s running the deli for him. The manager, he calls her.”

  “A deli manager? In that tiny store? Ten steps and you hit the back door,” Agnes said, her mind off her own worries at last. She covered her mouth to suppress a giggle as she glanced at her sister. “Zaidie, you gotta admit—”

  “Okay, that is kind of funny,” Zaidie conceded—though I wasn’t sure if she really thought so, or she was just happy to hear Agnes laugh.

  “Let me guess,” Louie said. “I bet it’s what’s-her-name—Jeffrey’s mother. Old Joe’s had his eye on that dame for years.”

  Course, I bristled right away. “Gina Lollobrigida? That might be who you’d pick, but Joe O’Connor’s got his mind on a higher plane these days.”

  “Higher plane, my ass. You saying he’s got the Sisters of Mercy to run the joint?”

  “Closest thing to it,” I said, interrupting the laughter that had now consumed the bunch of them. “From what I hear, he’s talked his church friend into making up the potato salad and what
ever else he plans to sell in that imperfect deli of his.”

  The truth slowly seeped into Louie’s brain as he wiped his mouth. “Church friend? But Joe’s been going to rosary group with . . .” He threw down his napkin. “What the hell are you tellin’ me here, Dahlia?”

  I looked out on five sets of lifted eyebrows, mirroring my own, some in curiosity, a couple in disbelief—and one in plain horror.

  “From what I hear, he’s made up a sign for her, too.” Though I usually left the theatrics to the kids, I stood up like Agnes did when she made a big announcement and painted one of Jimmy’s imaginary banners: “Anna P. Moscatelli, Manager.”

  “My mother? That Anna Moscatelli?” Louie gasped. “Impossible. She’s seventy-five, for chrissake—and she’s never had a job in her life. Besides, I—I won’t allow it.”

  “Seventy-seven last September,” Jimmy corrected him. Louie stared at me as if it was all my fault.

  “It’s 1968, Dad,” Zaidie said. “Women want their own jobs; we’re tired of husbands or fathers telling us what we can and cannot do.”

  “Or sons,” Agnes added gently, almost as if she felt sorry for the world that was crumbling around people like Louie. Me, too, I suppose.

  “That might be fine for you girls, but good Lord, Nonna’s almost eighty,” I said—more defensive than I intended.

  “You always said she’s got the energy of a woman half her age, didn’t you?” Zaidie put in.

  “Two women,” Agnes added.

  A hush fell over the table as everyone focused on their meat loaf and creamed corn.

  “Nah. Not buying it,” Jimmy finally said, looking up. “Even if she wanted a dang job, Nonna would never work in a store with that name. Nothing’s Perfect? I mean, have you ever seen a speck of dust in her house?”

  “He’s right; she wouldn’t set foot in the place—on general principles.” Louie shot me another look of blame. “Where on earth d’you get that crazy rumor anyway?”

  “Hmm.” That was all I had to say to him and his blame. Him and his boss routine. Maybe my girls were right. Us women were tired of being told what we could and couldn’t do. Tall as a queen, I got up to clear the table.

  THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, Anna showed up with none other than Joe O’Connor himself. Even dragged poor Crazy Joe—excuse me, Joe Jr.—along, though he shook his head when Anna tried to coax him inside.

  Realizing this wasn’t the typical visit from Nonna, who hadn’t even brought a pie, the girls drifted down from upstairs and took a seat in the parlor. By then, Joe Jr. was pacing up and down the porch, carrying on an argument with himself about his duties at the store. “Sweep the floor. Help Anna in the deli. Say good morning to the customers. No! I’m not saying it and you can’t make me. Smile, Joe, make sure you smile. No smiling! I won’t.”

  Thank goodness nothing’s perfect, I thought to myself, plunking a plate of stale Lorna Doones in front of the guests. “Tell us, Anna. Are you really planning to work in a store called—”

  “That just the front. In my deli, everything”—she put her fingers to her lips and kissed them, paisan style—“perfetta!”

  Louie opened his mouth to speak—probably to say he wouldn’t have it. But before he got a word out, Joe looked toward the stairs. “We were hoping to catch your Jimmy. Is he here?”

  Nonna glanced in the direction of the hook that told the story of Jimmy’s life. Or everything we could discern of it. Since the leather jacket was there, he was most likely upstairs sleeping it off.

  “I just remember. Jeemy tell me he have to help a friend on Sunday,” she said, covering for him like we all had learned to do. “You talk to his papa, Joe. He tell Jeemy.”

  “Or to his mother,” I put in. Some independent woman Anna turned out to be.

  Across the room, my girls smiled at me.

  “We’re gonna be hiring someone to help with the painting before we open,” Joe said.

  “That dump needs a lot more than a coat of paint—” Louie began.

  I hurled a look at him before he got any further. With any luck, Jimmy might get a month’s work of it.

  “And after we open up, we’ll need a delivery driver.”

  “A delivery driver, huh? Sounds like you got big plans for the place, Joe. The Nothing’s Perfect Market and Deli, huh?”

  If Joe caught the sarcasm, he didn’t seem to care. It was like he was just waiting for someone to ask. His eyes ignited. That’s when I realized it wasn’t just the name of a market; it was some kind of religion.

  He raked his cottony white hair till it stood on end as he leaned in with his story. “Ya know, ever since the trouble started with Joe Jr., I been nursing a grudge against God. Me, I mighta deserved a curse like that—especially in my wild days. But an innocent kid? What had he done? And my Edna was an angel on earth. How could God—”

  An angel on earth—Edna O’Connor? The woman was the worst gossip in the neighborhood, her and her friend Gina Lollobrigida. Besides that, I’d never forgiven her for calling the dog officer and trying to get Princie put to sleep when the dog tore her dress from the line. Thought more of that white dress than my kids, I thought. Course I wasn’t about to say any of that.

  “Hmph,” I blurted out in spite of myself.

  Fortunately, Joe was too caught up in his story to hear me. “Twenty-plus years, I never set a foot in a church, and when I went back, it wasn’t to pray or none of that. I went cause after all those years of Catholic school, listening to how the Church knew the answer to everything, I felt like I deserved an explanation. Or a refund.

  “So day after day, I sat there with the foolish old ladies—sorry, Anna, not you of course—waiting for someone to answer one simple question. Why? I didn’t kneel, I didn’t stand, and I didn’t get up when it was time for Communion. I just sat there waiting. And every day the priest stood up there delivering nothing but the same old rigamarole I been hearing since I was a kid.”

  Louie cleared his throat loudly. Then he got up and opened the window a little wider. “I’m sure all this is leadin’ to some kinda point, Joe, but we got things to do, and your boy out there—” By then, Joe Jr.’s walking and ranting had reached a fever pitch.

  But Joe had my attention and he knew it. “Let him talk, Louie—and Joe Jr.’s a man, not a boy.”

  Joe lowered his head and when he lifted it, he ran his fingers through his hair again. He’d forgotten everyone else and was talking directly to me.

  “Then one day, just when I was about to give up, I got what I came for.” He rose as if to leave.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Louie said, arms folded across his chest. “I just wasted ten minutes of my life listening to the buildup—”

  “You already seen the name of my market, didn’t you?”

  “Nothing’s Perfect? That’s it, Joe? You sat in Mass months and months to come to that—excuse me—idiotic conclusion? Like I said before, we got too much to do around here to sit around listening to—”

  “Where you hear that, Guiseppe?” Nonna said, as if this was the first she’d heard of his revelation. “Not in my church.”

  “That’s exactly where I heard it, Anna. Right there in St. Anthony’s. Third pew. Aisle seat. It was the Feast of All Saints or Souls—one of those—and the Father was saying how saints weren’t what we thought. Sure, some of ’em were brilliant thinkers who wrote books and founded orders, but others couldn’t even read and write.

  “And some were drunks or sluts or so broke up by grief they didn’t think they could take another step. But they did. They did. And then there were saints with bad tempers like mine. Even after they became saints, they were still popping off sometimes.”

  “Saints—popping off? Dio mio,” Nonna said, crossing herself.

  Joe didn’t hear her, though. Standing by the window where his son was in a full-blown rant, water filled his eyes as he held me with his gaze. “But that’s not the best part, Dahlia. The best part is it’s all right.”

&
nbsp; “We all know you been through a rough time, Joe,” Lou said. “Maybe you should see one of them doctors like your Joe goes to. No shame in it.” He was starting to sound like Zaidie.

  “The whole world and everyone in it is all fouled up, and it’s all right, cause you know what? It wasn’t never meant to be perfect. Not in your heart or mine and sure as hell not in this life. All we gotta do, all we can do is be what we were made to be. You hear Junior out there? He’s not just fine, Dahlia. He’s a living, breathing saint.”

  “The kid who used to put nails in the road to ruin people’s tires—a saint?” Louie muttered. “The one out there cursin’ up a storm on my front porch?”

  But no one heard him. In a heartbeat, Agnes was on her feet like his first convert ready to step up and be immersed in the water. “Um, Mr. O’Connor?”

  Joe, who had started for the door, turned around. He was so focused on his story, on me, he looked startled, as if he’d almost forgotten my girls were there, taking in every word.

  “You know that job you were offering Jimmy? He’ll take it.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Inferno

  ZAIDIE

  JIMMY TOOK MOST OF THE WEIGHT WHILE I WALKED BACKWARD UP the attic stairs, angling the desk through the narrow passage.

  “Man, I almost forgot what a beast this thing is,” he groaned when we reached the top floor. “Last time I drug that thing up a flight of stairs, I had Jools on the other end.”

  “He offered this time, too. Did you see his face when you turned him down?”

  “No need to worry about Bousquet’s hurt feelin’s, Z.” With a cloth, Jimmy wiped a dusty window and peered into the empty street. “Cause right around now, he ain’t got nothin’ on his mind but that bottle of Old Crow he sent Stewie out for this afternoon. Just hope he saved me a coupla shots. My back’s killin’ me.”

  I winced at the mention of his familiar comfort, but since Jimmy had taken the job at the market, we’d started to get close again and I didn’t want to say anything that might ruin it. Together we pushed the desk into the space I had cleared and stood back to admire it.