Tony's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  The Paul Godfrey Orchestra was by reputation elegant, but it also had exciting new arenas for growth—more theatrical shows, with dance, comedy, and sketches. It was all new, and Tony Arma was eager for reinvention.

  * * *

  “Cheech!” Lucille met her sister in the ward.

  “You did it. Sister Margaret got Dad a room. Just like that. A great room. He’s awake, he’s sipping broth, and he’s waiting for the doctor.”

  Chi Chi followed Lucille up the stairwell. Giddy with relief, she threw the entrance door to the fourth floor open.

  As soon as they stepped into the hallway, they knew that their father had fallen into a vat of Roman Catholic luck, Salesian style. The nuns moved methodically in and out of the rooms; the only sound was the brush of their long skirts on the linoleum floor. The cool ocean breezes blew through the open doors on either end of the hall, ruffling the sheers like angel wings.

  Barbara leaned against the wall outside their father’s room. “How did you do it?”

  “It turns out we have connections. Evidently my jubilee song for the Salesians was one for the ages.”

  “It didn’t dawn on Mama to ask for help,” said Lucille.

  “She just sat there all day and didn’t think, My husband needs a decent doctor?” Chi Chi asked.

  “She’s in shock. Not exactly, but close. She’s really scared and doesn’t know what to do,” Barbara said.

  “She doesn’t have the luxury of being scared. Dad needs her. She has to be strong and stand up for him. We all do.” Chi Chi led her sisters into their father’s room, and whistled. “Dad, you’re in the Ritz,” she said as the girls gathered around their father.

  Mariano’s color was poor, but he was upbeat, which reassured the family. “Yes I am.”

  “This is what you get for making the good Sisters a stone wall,” Barbara said as she embraced her dad.

  “No good deed goes unrewarded,” Lucille reminded him.

  “Yeah, something like that.” Mariano smiled. “Now if I can just get the Sisters to pray your song onto the airwaves.”

  “You’re not supposed to think about work right now,” Isotta chided.

  “Why not? It makes me happy. The possibilities.”

  Chi Chi shot Barbara a look.

  “Think of the possibilities of a vacation for you and Mama,” Barbara said.

  “You need a vacation, Iso?” Mariano asked her.

  “I have everything I need.”

  “So do I. I got the shore. The backyard. The garage. What else do I need?”

  “A few tests,” said the nun from the doorway.

  “I’m all yours, Sister,” Mariano said cheerfully.

  * * *

  Chi Chi was asleep in the chair under the window in her father’s room when he returned from the last round of tests around midnight. She woke up, groggy, as two nuns and an orderly wheeled him into the room on a metal gurney that creaked like the floorboards on a rusted-out battleship.

  “How’d he do?” Chi Chi asked.

  “Your father is strong,” one of the nuns said.

  “Because I’m built like a cement mixer.” He patted his ample stomach. “Reserves.”

  Chi Chi watched, amazed, as the nuns half his size lifted her father with two bedsheets from the gurney and positioned him in the bed with ease.

  “You’re all set, Mr. Donatelli,” one of the nuns said.

  “We’ll be in to check on you on the hour,” the other reminded him.

  “Thank you, dear Sisters,” said Mariano gratefully. “Good night.”

  Chi Chi rubbed her eyes. “I sent Ma and the girls home.”

  “Good girl. Your mother was tired.”

  “How do you feel, really?”

  Mariano lowered his voice. “I heard them talking. All those doctors downstairs. I have a bad heart. Bad valves. It sounded like they were talking about our old Hudson. They checked everything. Heart, lungs, brain. Blood. What else? Oh yes, muscles. But it doesn’t matter. When you have a lousy ticker, you’re out of luck.”

  “That’s not true. You can stop eating sweets. There’s medicine. And you can slow down.”

  “I can’t sit around all day, you know that.”

  “You can and you will. You’re going to get better.”

  “You think so, Cheech?”

  “Sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your color is good.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “I thought I would live to be a hundred. My great-grandfather lived to one hundred and three. He lived in the Dolomites. Ate figs and berries. Snorted snuff every morning. Climbed the mountain every day. Like a goat. Nobody could keep up with him. He could’ve been an Olympian. Buried three wives. And back then”—Mariano sliced the air with his hand—“that was a feat. A feat.”

  “You’re going to come out of this better than ever, Dad.”

  “I like your positive attitude. I wish I had it. I’m making a mess of everything. Barbara is excited about her wedding. And this situation with me just craps all over it. A girl needs her father on her wedding day. It’s proper.”

  “You’re going to walk her down the aisle.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m a believer,” Chi Chi said softly.

  “That’s good. Put your faith in God. But right now, I need to put my faith in you. You’re my daughter, but Cheech, you’re also my friend. Funny how this went. Your mother kept having girls, and I kept praying, ‘One son, Jesu. Jesu, could you send me one son?’ And now, if I had one, I’d send him back. I got just what I needed and more than I deserved.”

  “You deserved the best.”

  “Now listen to me. Because there are some things you need to know. I want you to make sure Lucille goes to secretarial school.”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t let Barbara push you around.”

  “She will no matter what I say.”

  “But don’t let it get in,” Mariano insisted, tapping his head.

  “I will try.”

  “Your mother will surprise you. She’ll make a life again.”

  “You’re her true love, Dad.”

  “So she says. I know she was mine.”

  “Dad, I don’t think you’re dying.”

  “You didn’t hear what I heard.”

  “Maybe they were talking about the guy in four-nineteen.”

  “Nice try, kid.”

  “You’re going to live a long life.”

  “Forty-one isn’t so bad.” He rested against the pillow. “I saw my girls grow up. Many men get less.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve thanked you enough for everything you’ve done for me. Building the studio. Recording the songs. Trying to get them on the radio. I know it was a sacrifice.”

  “It was nothing but a pleasure.”

  “It was everything to me. You know my sisters think we’re nuts. They think the Donatelli Sisters is some game we made up to pass the time.”

  “It’s not in their veins, Cheech.”

  “You knew all along that it’s my life to write songs and perform them.”

  “And you got the goods.”

  “They don’t believe it.”

  “But it’s all right to be the crazy ones. We have each other.” Mariano chuckled. “Now, maybe I give way too much advice, and it could be said I never took any that was given to me. Maybe that’s part of giving it in the first place.”

  “You got advice for me?”

  “I do. They’re thoughts I have when I’m driving you around places, but I don’t let go of them; they’ve stuck with me, so it must mean I’m supposed to share them with you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Mariano nodded. “I hope you’ll always live near the ocean. No matter what happened to us, your mother and I had the shore. They say that salt water can heal, and it does, and that the rays of the sun can strengthen your bones—no doubt that’s t
rue—and that the sand makes you slow down and savor your steps. If you close your eyes and listen, the sound of the ocean is the most beautiful music ever written. The tempo of the surf as the tide rolls in matches your breath, the sound of the waves as they crash over the rocks sound like the brushes on a snare. It’s like the opening riff to a great piece of jazz. Sometimes I’m standing out there and I hear the blend and I think Ethel Waters is going to rise out of the surf and start wailing. The ocean is God’s orchestra. I will miss it.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right, and they were talking about you downstairs. Could you forget what they said?” Chi Chi sat down on the bed next to her father. “Could you stay for me?”

  “You don’t need me anymore, kid.”

  “But I do.”

  “Listen to me, because time doesn’t owe anybody a favor. Whatever happens, don’t give up your music. You fight for it like it’s your baby, your country, and your savior. Nobody will tell you this, but work is your salvation. Even when it’s bad, it provides for a life. I figured that one out when I lost my job. It’s not called losing your job for nothing—you do, in fact, wind up lost. Work gives you something to do but it also grows you, even when you’re old. I’m sad to leave my family behind, but that studio, it was all new, I was learning, I was just getting started. There’s so much coming that I won’t see, that I won’t be a part of, and how I wish I were young and had a strong heart and the opportunity to get in on it. But here’s the beauty part: you do.”

  “It won’t be any fun without you.”

  “Yes, it will. You know how peevish I got when Gibbs didn’t play your song during Shore Hour? Well, I thought about him later, with his shoe-polish hair, and I felt for the guy. He’s just trying to hold on like everybody else. He wants the old days back because he thought they were better, but they weren’t. He was just young then, so they seemed better because he had verve. Along the way, he didn’t learn much, except to hold on to his fear and hang on to his turf. His voice reaches thousands up and down the shore, he can play a record and it becomes a hit, but he isn’t listening and he doesn’t see it.”

  “See what?”

  “The voices of this century will rise from the factories, from the working people. They won’t come from the nightclubs of Europe like they did when I was a kid. Enough with the kings and the queens with their fancy crowns! The message will come from some kid from a slum who has seen it all and who will know how to sing it because he feels something. Gibbs should’ve taken one look at me and said to himself, ‘This fat guy with the oil stains on his pants from fixing his truck that keeps breaking down, this guy knows something I don’t.’ Because, if he thought that, he would’ve been right. Look to the audience who needs the inspiration for your inspiration. They know. Trust me, they know.”

  Chi Chi wanted to talk, but her father had fallen asleep. Soon he was snoring. Quietly she rose from the bed and went to the window to close it. Before she did, she leaned out and looked at the ocean, lit by a three-quarter moon so bright that for a moment Chi Chi thought a regatta of sailing ships was coming toward Sea Isle Beach to claim it, their oil lamps lighting the prows. But it was just the moon shining on the water.

  She closed the window to shut out the damp air and went to turn off the lamp next to her father’s bed. But before she flipped the switch, she straightened the blanket over him. She looked at his face. He had stopped snoring. His color was off. She moved to the other side of the bed, thinking it was the light. In a panic, she placed her head on her father’s chest. She heard a faint tap. She placed her fingers on his neck, but could barely detect a pulse. She ran into the hallway and screamed for help.

  * * *

  Saverio woke up in the Richmond Squire Inn, a few blocks from the Jefferson Hotel, in a cold sweat. He flipped on the light on the nightstand. It took him a moment to remember where he was, which city, what day of the month and year it was, and what he had been dreaming when he woke up.

  Next to the door was his suitcase; the dress bag holding his tuxedo hung on the back of it. His sports jacket, trousers, socks, undergarments, shoes, and hat were laid out neatly, ready to wear. Everything was as he had left it the night before. He began to shake. He did not like to be alone.

  He tapped the last cigarette out of the pack on the nightstand before swinging his legs over the side of the bed, grabbing a match, and lighting it. He went to the window, lifting the sash as high as it would go. It had to be a hundred degrees outside; a gauzy coral haze of humidity hung over the city. Saverio took a long, smooth drag off the cigarette, trying to calm his nerves. The sun was rising, a smear of shimmering pink beyond Monument Avenue. The hotel was quiet, as were the streets outside. The Rod Roccaraso Orchestra bus had pulled out at 3:00 a.m. without him.

  The change settled over Saverio, and he was determined to embrace it. There was just one problem, one stinging regret.

  Saverio had agreed in haste to change his name. He didn’t want to change it, and didn’t like it—it sounded phony. Tony Arma sounded like a guy running numbers in South Philly, or a middleman in the garment district hawking thread in New York City. He wasn’t even sure Tony Arma sounded like a crooner, though it was a name that fit on a marquee. So did Bozo, he thought, or Betty Boop. It also fit in a newspaper ad, in the fine print where the singers were listed, which made it all the worse.

  Saverio remembered when his father told him that show business wouldn’t stop until it took everything away from him, and now it had. Show business had taken away Saverio’s name and handed something back to him anew, as though his lineage, history, and identity weren’t his in the first place.

  Who was he now? According to the contract he signed, he belonged to the Paul Godfrey Orchestra, but outside of that, what was he besides another expendable singer, replaceable in any city, like a flat tire on the tour bus? He was just working another line, he figured, but this time he held a microphone, and not Henry Ford’s wrench.

  * * *

  After Mariano Donatelli’s funeral mass at St. Joseph Church, the family home was filled with mourners from as far away as Albany and as close as next door. Barbara made sure they food trays were refilled. Lucille cleared dishes, busing them back to the kitchen to be washed for the next round of guests stopping in to express their sympathy. There was plenty of food to serve; every surface in the kitchen was stacked with trays of manicotti, tiramisu, rolls, cold-cut platters, salads, pastries, and cookies prepared by family and neighbors.

  There was a lot of chatter about fate. Chi Chi overheard plenty as she refilled glasses and placed food on the tables. The Donatelli girls and their mother were always gracious hosts. The mourners would leave Mariano and Isotta’s home having had a delicious meal and homemade wine. They reminisced about the Fourth of July, and how, only days before, they had gathered under the same sun in the same garden to celebrate. Chi Chi caught fragments of their lamentations. “Mariano looked robusto,” one friend said. “Remember how he hoisted a keg,” another said. “He was shooting off fireworks for the kids.” Others chimed in, “He was so vibrant. So young. Too young.”

  Chi Chi learned the definition of young that day. If people said that you were too young on the day you died, that meant you were still young. She would never look at forty-one as old again. Chi Chi went into the kitchen. She wrapped a moppeen around the handle of the espresso maker on the stove and filled tiny cups with the brew. Peering out the kitchen window, she observed her mother as she sat at the table under the umbrella, surrounded by her friends. They were trying to make her laugh. Chi Chi watched Isotta politely play along as she listened to humorous stories about her funny, warm, exuberant husband, but her daughter knew that particular kind of joy was lost on her mother that day. It would be a long time before her mother would laugh again.

  Chi Chi lifted the tray and checked in with her sisters in the living room. She handed off the tray of espresso cups to Lucille, who took the cue and began serving them to the guests.

  “You g
irls should open a restaurant,” Mrs. Brennan from church commented.

  “I’m too fast on the typewriter,” Lucille countered.

  Chi Chi slipped out the front door and down the walk. She needed to be alone, if just for a few minutes. She wanted to think about what to do going forward, which she had not done in the days since her father had died.

  She had intended to walk down to the beach, but instead she found herself walking in the other direction, to the garage. She found the key under the mat outside the door and unlocked it.

  White light came through the windows in separate beams, landing in rectangular pools on the concrete floor. The place reeked of fresh paint; inspired by Saverio’s visit, Mariano had just given the studio a fresh coat. Chi Chi was certain her father had not intended to die. He had plans to advertise, and to record other artists besides his daughters. That was her father’s way—he thought big, without limitation, and made plans for the future. Mariano lived in hope, if only his daughters could be like him, in this moment.

  Everything on the console was as her father had left it. His handwritten notes, in block print, had key codes and times listed for the last song they had worked on together. Chi Chi hadn’t finished it, but was planning to on the day Mariano went to the hospital. Haven’t We Met was a ballad, Chi Chi’s first attempt at one. Her father teased her that she was listening to too much Sarah Vaughan on the radio. She remembered telling her father that there was no such thing as listening to too much Sarah Vaughan.

  Chi Chi picked up her father’s pencil. He had chewed the eraser tip. She looked at his teeth marks, remembering his front teeth, which were a bit larger than the rest. She remembered he’d once joked, “My front teeth are as big as my feet.” Now that he was gone, everything he touched was a relic, a sacred object to treasure, proof that he had lived and had thought about things and pondered how best to do his work. She put the pencil in her apron pocket. Who would she talk to about music now? Who would make notes when she was recording a song?