My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  I’d actually gotten as far as Union Station when they mustered me out after VJ Day. As a big-shot navy ace, I rated a private berth on the train instead of the bench the other fellas got. There was a celebration planned for me too, even a parade from what I understand. It was going to be some kind of a big deal.

  I never made it out of the station.

  I’d been slowly falling apart ever since Pete died. He was my best friend, and I’d left him alone in combat—an unpardonable sin. That crushing guilt, and the permanence of coming back to a world I felt I no longer belonged in, brought all my anxieties to the fore, state by suffocating state, as the train churned homeward. Something about stepping out in the first familiar place pushed me over the edge.

  They took me to Hines that night, then shipped me to a bigger VA facility in Washington a few days later. They kept me a few months until they were sure I was safe around the razor blades, then they cut me loose. That time there was no parade.

  I kicked around DC awhile after my discharge, putting the pieces back in place, brick by brick. When news broke in late ’46 that Chiang Kai-shek needed contract pilots in his battle against the Communists, I slipped away, back to China.

  Back to the fighting, back to the killing, back to what I knew best.

  It was a long, long time before my war ended.

  20

  Dinner made things a lot easier. God, how I missed the way my family ate. Last night’s steak had been heavenly, but the table before me looked like the Feast of the Assumption: lemon chicken, bracciole, anchovies, risotto, baked garlic, squash, and a bucket of polenta just begging to be slathered in my mother’s gravy. My dad was northern Italian, but my mother was all Neapolitan, and she still made the best red sauce in the neighborhood, which drove all the Calabrese and Siciliani crazy. Hey, the woman had a gift.

  By the time we’d polished off the third bottle of Uncle Nello’s wine, everyone was feeling pretty relaxed. Everyone but Fabrizio, of course. His black eyes never left me. Some of the girls had started to clear the table when he said, “So . . . Joe . . . is there anything you want to tell us about your world travels?”

  Carmella was resting her head on my shoulder. I pulled my arm away from her and eased her up, took a deep breath, let it out. “Yeah, Fab, I do.”

  He pulled a section of the Tribune out, slapped it on top of his plate, Huser’s byline facing up. I felt my eyes close involuntarily as my face crinkled up.

  “Wanna start with your ‘pal’ Frank Sinatra here?”

  There were a few, What?s around the room and several blank faces. Uncle Nello kept smiling benignly behind his horn-rim glasses, but everyone else just looked perplexed.

  I stared at Fabrizio a long, hard time, looked over at my mother, then around the room. “Send the kids outside,” I said. “And let’s have a pitcher of water, huh—I’m going to be doing some talking here.”

  There was some shooing and shuffling, along with a whine or two and the clatter of plates being cleared. The spouses politely begged off from the discussion. Then it was just my mother, Zio Nello, Zia Teresa, and my brothers and sisters in a silent dining room. I fished out my Luckys, shook one free, then hit it with the Zippo and took a deep pull. Circling the room with my eyes, I marked each face, sensing their concern, their curiosity, maybe their sense of loss for me. Finally, I let out the smoke, then cleared my throat. It was time.

  I did all the talking for the better part of an hour. There were some gasps, some tears, even a few laughs as I filled in the blanks. The war, my breakdown, China, my friendship with Frank. I even told them about Helen, my ex-fiancée—most of it anyway. In the end, I gave them a fair accounting. Not everything, but a fair accounting. My mother didn’t ever need to know the rest.

  And when I was done, I stubbed out my third cigarette and closed with words I couldn’t have imagined speaking just two days earlier, “When I shipped out with the Flying Tigers, I figured I’d be gone six months, a year at most. No way could I foresee being away from all of you for so long—or what happened to me out there. I just . . . I just hope you can find a way to forgive me. . . . Maybe even remember when you loved me.”

  I threw down the last of my water, folded my hands awkwardly in my lap, and looked up. “That’s it.”

  Unsteady gazes met mine across the table. My mother mumbled silently as she worked over her rosary like she was trying to make the Second Coming occur in our dining room. At my side, Carmella dabbed her eyes discreetly. Across from her, Francesca wept openly. My youngest brother, Jimmy, sat perfectly still, his hands flat on top of the table, his big brown eyes the size of chestnuts.

  Then Fabrizio got up, his face grave. He stood at the end of the table, stone still, breathing slowly. After some length of time, he fixed his eyes on me and began to speak.

  “Joe,” he said, “you are the eldest. The rest of us grew up admiring you for your hard work at school, rejoiced when you won the Golden Gloves, burst with pride when you went off to college. You were our hero long before you became an ace, but when you did that, too, you elevated our family, our neighborhood, our whole race in the eyes of this city.”

  He looked around the room, surveying the faces of the family he now led. “And when you came home the way you did, we bled inside for you. Hid our shock, closed our ranks. Took it when we could, fought when we couldn’t take it any longer, but always we stood up for you.

  “Then Zio Emilio passed away. We waited for you then, but you didn’t come home. And then our own father became ill and finally died—and still you couldn’t be found. That was unacceptable,” he said, his voice cracking, “but we waited for you. And finally, we began to marry and have children . . . and still you didn’t come.”

  He paused several beats, lowered his eyes. “But by then we were no longer waiting for you.”

  I nodded mutely as each charge was levied, pangs of shame and regret stinging my still tearless face as I awaited the sentence.

  “But, Joe,” he said, stepping forward, “you are still a Buonomo. And although we have many questions, you will always be one of us.” He looked down at me sternly, stuck out a wooden hand. “Welcome home.”

  I cocked my head to make sure I’d heard him correctly. After a long delay, I rose uncertainly and took his hand. Fabrizio leaned in as we shook, speaking tersely underneath his breath so the others couldn’t hear. “You only get this one chance.”

  Then Uncle Nello proclaimed that this was as good an occasion as there would ever be for grappa and reached for the bottle and glasses in the cabinet. My mother tried to protest because it was Sunday, but she was heavily outvoted, and soon we were all chugging down shots of the fiery liquor.

  The shouts of “Cent’anni!” and “Viva i Buonomo!” we let out were probably heard all the way over on Damen Avenue.

  21

  My brothers and I headed out to the front stoop about nine. It was getting chilly, but my mother rustled up my father’s old camelhair coat and threw it over my shoulders. Jimmy said that with the collar flipped up close to my graying hair, I even looked like Papà in it. That image was priceless.

  Zia Teresa dragged Zio Nello upstairs a few minutes later, then my oldest sister left with her husband, the guys’ wives, and all the kids. Carmella and Tommy had moved out to Melrose Park a few years earlier, but everyone else was within walking distance.

  “How come so far away, Carm?” I asked as I hugged her goodnight.

  There was a trace of pity in her smile. “You’ve been away, Joe. A lot of things have changed. You’ll see.”

  “I noticed some things I didn’t like on the walk down.”

  “It’s gonna get worse. The boys will tell you.”

  I cocked my head. Fab and Jimmy nodded, a sad resignation in their faces.

  “Okay, Carm. Goodnight, lil’ sister.”

  She blushed, touched a hand to my cheek. “Buona notte,
Joe. Ti voglio bene.”

  The sound of those words was strange, yet very welcome.

  “I love you, too, sis.”

  When everyone had left, it was just me and the boys on the steps, like it was a thousand years ago. Fab pulled out a Camel, torched it.

  I pushed him gently. “Still smokin’ those coffin nails?”

  He just made a face, waved it in the air. “You’re still a Lucky man, I see.”

  “Sort of, I guess.” I turned to Jimmy, waved the pack at him. “Kid?”

  “Oh come on, Joe,” he said. “You know I don’t smoke.”

  “Guess I forgot.”

  He took one and stuck it over his ear anyway, his curly black locks holding it tight.

  We burned our smokes and said nothing, rocking gently in the cold night. But the warmth of my brothers at my side could have held back an ice storm. There were a million things to discuss—names to learn, stories to hear, bonds to rebuild—but at that moment, all of us understood the simple gift of sitting there in silence, just feeling it, not talking. Just waving at the neighbors passing by on their walks, exchanging pleasantries.

  Finally, Fabrizio stood up. “Gotta work in the morning. I’m a foreman now at the factory—can’t be late.”

  Jimmy said, “Me too. Gotta help Maria put the kids down. I’m up at five myself. Even senior residents get long hours.”

  I spun my head ninety left, then right, smiling at them both. “Foreman. Doctor . . . you guys done good.”

  “We’ve done all right,” Fab said. “But we don’t pal around with Frank Sinatra.”

  I could tell he was playing, but jabbing the needle in just a little too. “You wouldn’t like the hours—or the work.”

  He gave me the ol’ stinkeye for that one.

  We said our goodnights and I promised to see them the next day after work. Fabrizio stopped halfway down the stoop, turned to face me. “I meant it when I said you’ve got just one chance, you know.”

  I met his gaze, his lidded eyes unblinking in the darkness. “Yeah.”

  “People are going to have more questions as time goes by, resentment will probably grow. Years have passed. Decades.”

  I frowned, knowing he was right. “I had to start somewhere.”

  Jimmy was standing out on the sidewalk, the streetlight backlighting his body. “Let’s go, Fab,” came from the vicinity of his shadowy form. Fabrizio turned, nodded, then looked back up at me. He pointed two gloved fingers in my direction and shook them, his face suddenly a sheet of slate. It was my father’s look.

  “Don’t screw this up,” he said in a cold, biting voice.

  Then he turned and walked off. I watched the two of them go off into the night together, their shadows slowly merging into one, the clip of their heels fading away on the sidewalk as they headed toward their homes, their families, their proper lives.

  I leaned hard against a pillar several minutes, ruminating on what might have been. Then I popped back into the kitchen to kiss my mother goodnight. It was a good ways back to the hotel and I didn’t know if the trains still ran all night.

  “Where you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re staying here tonight; Cesca already made up your room.”

  “My room?”

  She gave me her famous, How did I raise this much of an idiot? look. “Your room, Giuseppino. Uppastairs, on the left.”

  “You mean you kept it for me?”

  She shook a hand in the air. “Of course not. But Carm and Tommy took the kids to Melrose, so now it’s empty again. Whaddya think, we made some kinda shrine out of it?”

  “Oh, Ma . . .” I said, grabbing her and kissing the top of her head, smelling the olive oil she still put in her hair. I admired her for several seconds, warmth spreading inside me. Then I declared, “I think I’m gonna take a walk.”

  “Una passegiata? Take that coat you were wearing—it’s cold out there. And don’t be out too late, I’m gonna lock that door at eleven. Mi senti, figlio mio? Alle undici.”

  A warning finger waved before my eyes as she said it.

  I shook my head, laughing as I walked out. “Oh, Mamma, you know you never lock that door.”

  22

  I took the steps in twos and bounced down Fillmore toward Ashland, passing brownstones and chalked-out hopscotch courts on the way, blued living rooms reflecting Candid Camera and Bonanza on the brown leaves that clung to the branches of the elm trees. The television glow was new, and so were the cars for the most part, but everything else looked the same. The lights were out at the Bencaros as I made the right at the block’s end, but I was sure that Sal was up to his eyeballs in highballs with Frank someplace.

  Reaching the next corner, I made another right and began the long stroll. I always loved Taylor Street at night: the quiet storefronts, their wares dangling out of reach behind darkened windows; the neon tubes glowing in script in front of the taverns; the couples strolling with young children; the old men pulled up in chairs near the bocce court, admiring the girls as they walked by and telling gentle lies about their younger days.

  I wandered absentmindedly for several blocks, past Racine toward Halsted, toward the cranes looming in the night. So many things had happened in one day, in one evening. Emotions were colliding inside me like Fermi’s particles, setting off chain reactions of memories, of what if? and what’s next? I felt at home on my old street, content even. I’d seen one guy twice already, but so what?

  The lights were still on at the Café Napoli across the street. Just to be safe, I went in and ordered an espresso from an older gentleman. His olive face and prominent nose made me suspect he was from the old country. His voice made it an airtight case.

  Before I knew it, I’d slipped into the local dialect we’d spoken on the streets as kids, a blend of Neapolitan and Marchese.

  “Many years here?” I asked, clipping words off at their ends like so many cigar tips.

  “Troppi,” he said, the long, flat line of his mouth turning down at the corners.

  I stole a glance out the window, spooned some sugar into the small cup he’d poured me, making a tiny vortex as I swirled it down to the bottom of the black liquid. “Ma perche?”

  Signor LoGuardio went on to detail for me exactly why he had “too many” years in America. Following his arrival full of hope just after the First World War, he’d witnessed the whole long slow slide: the changing morality he’d seen develop in the neighborhood, the decline of respect for the family and the elderly, the abandonment of the traditions of Italy.

  “Quello bastardo” Mayor Daley was held up for special condemnation for conspiring with others to build the University of Illinois’s new campus in the heart of the century-old neighborhood, the perfidious act, he said, specifically designed to destroy the community and thwart the growing political ambitions of its people.

  I put down the espresso in two quick slurps, then listened quietly as he vented, his diatribe matching the bitterness of the coffee.

  When he was finished, I weighed what he had said, then asked, “Allora . . . now what?”

  “Italia,” he said flatly, smacking his hands together like he was brushing off chalk. Pointing with an outstretched finger, he indicated that the mobsters nearby had sealed the deal by putting too big of a mordito, or bite, on him for too long.

  One of the very unfortunate realities of Italian life on either side of the ocean was the ineradicable grip crime families had on the citizenry. The ’Ndràngheta, the Mafia, and the Camorra back home had also made the Atlantic passage, tucked in like so many steerage-class rats in the bowels of the steamers that had brought another million honest, hardworking Italians to Ellis Island and beyond. Once here, they spread as vermin do, bringing first the Black Hand then La Cosa Nostra to New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and any other place t
hey could sink their claws into, bringing the ills of the old world to the new. It was something I knew far too much about.

  I thanked the gentleman for the coffee. Reaching across the counter, I clasped his hand and placed my other on his shoulder, gazing at weathered brown eyes between bushy silver eyebrows and a matching mustache. I told him I hoped he’d find a reason to stay, if only to help hold the line. He nodded affirmatively but without much energy. I wished him well, scanned the street in both directions, and headed out.

  23

  As I came out to the sidewalk, I spied a couple of young kids three doors down, sitting on chairs outside a windowless business. I knew the setup, made the place for a “social club,” a closed-shop operation where Outfit guys cooked up their schemes and sharpened their knives. This one went way back; I could remember the punks from the Taylor Street Crew and the Forty-Two Gang doing their hugging and kissing rituals as they met out front in the old days.

  Seeing the kids was disturbing enough since they were only about twelve, but when I recognized one as my nephew Johnny, I went into low orbit.

  Johnny’s oh shit look gave it all away as I double-timed over. He whispered something to his partner as I neared, then turned to face me.

  “Don’t you move,” I ordered the other kid. “Not one step.” I cocked my head, struggling to grasp what I was seeing.

  “Uncle Joe—”

  “Zio,” I spit out. “It’s not uncle, it’s zio, okay? Don’t you kids talk Italian anymore?”

  Johnny’s eyes were baseballs, fear lining his small voice as he said, “Z-Zio Joe. I can ex—”

  “No, you can’t. You kids are leaving with me right now. We’ll sort it out with your fathers.”

  Then a cocksure voice mused from the doorway, “Something I can help you with, mister?”