Most Precious Blood

by Vince Sgambati

She often stopped at the store after Mass even though Lenny told her each time that Frankie slept late. So again, Lenny repeated: “He’s still sleeping, but he’ll be down soon to help out. He’s been working a lot in the store. Nights are still hard for him, so he sleeps in. He has his days and nights mixed up a little.”

  “Baby steps,” Tootsie said. “Well, I just thought I’d stop by. I’ve got to get to work. How about Tyrone and me come over to see Frankie tonight?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you come for ...” Lenny remembered that Vi was coming for dinner, and he tried to explain, but Tootsie cut him short.

  “Another time,” she said, and left before Lenny had the chance to apologize.

  He regretted not calling her back or chasing after her, though what would he have said? The truth was he looked forward to Vi coming for dinner — more than he was willing to admit to himself, never mind admit to Tootsie, but he still regretted having hurt her feelings.

  He added the browned gravy meat to a saucepot where garlic browned in olive oil, and he berated himself again for not inviting Tootsie to dinner. But how would that have worked? Ina! Don’t forget this is the first time we’re meeting Ina, he thought as he opened three large cans of plum tomatoes, poured the contents into a blender, pressed high for a few seconds, and poured the pulp into the mill propped over the saucepot. The juice showered upon the golden garlic and gravy meat and the kitchen sizzled with his parents’ and grandparents’ whispers about him making excuses for hurting Tootsie’s feelings and chatter about little things, like preparing sauce and not overcooking the macaroni. Once the sauce bubbled, he reduced the flame and their voices became more subdued. He added parsley and basil, a touch of oregano, and a pinch of sugar. He left the sauce, his parents and grandparents mumbling, and his guilt to simmer.

  In the store, Doug Turner and Frankie were just finishing lunch.

  “There’s the boss,” Doug said. “Frankie told me you’re preparing a feast for tonight.”

  “Not exactly,” Lenny said.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Just someone we haven’t seen in a while.”

  Frankie removed his apron and excused himself. “Nice talking with you, Mr. Turner. I have to go in the house for a few minutes.”

  “Sure, Frankie, I’ll see you later, and you make a mean hero. Better than your father.”

  Frankie smiled and walked towards the steps to the breezeway.

  “He’s looking good,” Doug said, “real good. He’s going to be fine — you’ll see. Smart, just like his father.”

  “You sound like Big Vinny,” Lenny said.

  “Shit. That can’t be good.”

  Lenny wiped the grease from the slicing machine. Traces of prosciutto clung to the blade. “It’s Frankie’s mom who’s coming for dinner tonight. She’s bringing his half sister. He’s never met his sister — neither have I. I just found out about her myself, and when I told Frankie, he seemed to take the news okay.”

  “Wow!” Doug stroked stubble on his chin. His hands were large, calloused, and stained with grease. Like Lenny’s, they were a workingman’s hands. “And you?” Doug said. “How are you doing with all this?”

  “Hey, if Obama can survive the Republicans, I can deal with having dinner with my ex-wife.” They both laughed, but Lenny had never called Vi his ex-wife until now, and the words felt odd on his tongue.

  “To this day, when I see my ex-wife,” Doug said, “I still get a pain. Like a doctor taking a scalpel to my wallet without using anesthesia.”

  They laughed again, but Lenny was stuck on the word ex-wife. For so long he had referred to Vi as Frankie’s mother, or when talking to Frankie, as your mother — ex-wife felt more personal.

  “Seems to me you got a lot of women trouble going on,” Doug said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your ex is coming for a fancy dinner, and I’ve told you plenty of times that Tootsie has a thing for you.”

  Lenny again thought of Tootsie storming out of the store this morning. He feigned laughter. “And I told you, you’re imagining things.”

  “Ahh ...” Deep creases formed around Doug’s frown.

  “And it’s not a feast.”

  “If you say so, Brother.” Doug nodded and raised his thumb as he left the store. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, and you can tell me all about it.”

  For the rest of the afternoon Lenny and Frankie took turns working in the store so Lenny could check on the sauce. At 5:00, Lenny locked the front door and turned the sign to read CLOSED — no explanation. He was sure to face the wrath of customers the next day.

  29

  Frankie showered while Lenny set the dining room table with Filomena’s good china and Lucia’s silverware and crystal stemware. Despite the number of times Filomena and Angie had told him on which side of the plate to place forks and knives, he never remembered, so he guessed, but then rearranged them. He found cloth napkins with embroidered edges in the credenza, but the embroidery on the napkins didn’t match the embroidery on the tablecloth. He searched for matching napkins until the whole thing struck him as ridiculous. We used to screw in a warehouse not at the Waldorf, he thought, and removed the silverware, set out the napkins with embroidery that didn’t match the tablecloth, and rearranged the silverware again.

  “Are you going to propose?” Frankie stood under the arch between the living and dining rooms. His hair was wet and he wore jeans and a t-shirt. “Looks like I’m underdressed.”

  “The only proposal I’m making tonight is that you be polite. And you look fine.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be a good boy, but you might want to shower and change. Smelling like provolone doesn’t go well with crystal.”

  Lenny ruffled Frankie’s wet mop of curls. “Is this a good idea, Frankie?”

  “We’ll see,” Frankie said. “What’s the worse that could happen? I’ve already been shot.”

  Lenny was stunned, but Frankie just shrugged his shoulders and walked into the kitchen.

  Frankie’s comment lingered as Lenny undressed. Frankie was right. Whatever happens tonight will seem trivial compared to what Frankie survived. But as Lenny stepped under the hot shower and was enveloped in steam, he couldn’t shake his anxiety. He knew he was as anxious for himself as he was for Frankie.

  Vincenzo’s sudden death not only changed the course of Lenny’s life from scholar to surrogate father and grocer, but it fettered his youth, especially young romance, or at least placed it on hiatus until Vi entered the store and his life.

  Lenny may have been her senior by 11 years, but she was the experienced woman, and he was the neophyte who enjoyed being impulsive, secretive, and sexual. Although brief, their relationship had been intense. Maybe it was that intensity rather than Vi that he missed. Maybe he had become addicted to their secret encounters in the warehouse. Or maybe it was more than that. Once they were discovered by the Ronzoni deliveryman, and even after they were married, Lenny’s passion for Vi only intensified. Sure, their romps in the warehouse were exciting, but on their wedding night, with friends and family knowing that Vi and he were a couple, he found her even more desirable. His lust for Vi never waned, it just also became love.

  After Lenny showered and shaved he studied the grays in his hair and the lines in his face in the bathroom mirror, and he ran his fingers over the veins in his arms. He had the look of a workingman, someone who had spent his life lifting, slicing, and bagging rather than sitting behind a desk or standing at a podium. No matter how thoroughly he scrubbed out the smell of the store or how closely he shaved or how carefully he brushed his hair, and whether he wore a grocer’s apron or a three-piece suit, he’d still be Hard Luck Lenny. A few weeks earlier such thoughts would have depressed him, maybe triggered a full-blown anxiety attack, but now he dismissed them with a sigh and a shrug, even a chuckle, and his anxiety dissipated like early morning fog yielding to a new day. Frankie was right about having been shot, and Lenny almost lost him, but didn’t. This w
as nothing compared to that.

  Lenny stared at his nakedness in the mirror. I’m still not so bad, Lenny thought. The night he walked Tootsie home from the train station there was no pity in her eyes when she invited him up to her apartment. She wanted him for who he was, not for who he might have been. And truth was it had been Vi who kept returning to the store with phony excuses that first day they met. She had pursued him. Sure that was over eighteen years ago, but there was some consolation in remembering that. Lenny dressed, and as he buttoned his button down white shirt and tucked his shirttails in his creased black slacks, he thought that for better or worse tonight would eventually become last night. This too shall pass.

  Dinner preparations went smoothly. Lenny made the salad, Frankie sliced the bread and placed the pot of water on the stove to boil. After Vi and Ina arrived, Frankie attended to the macaroni, and after he drained it and poured it into a bowl, Lenny added the sauce and ricotta, and Frankie poured the extra sauce into another bowl.

  They arrived promptly at 7. Except for her hazel eyes, Ina was a seven-year-old version of Vi. She removed her coat and boots without any help and, when Lenny told her that Frankie was in the kitchen, she went off looking for him.

  “Bashful, isn’t she?” Vi said, chuckling.

  Lenny helped Vi off with her coat. She sat on the ottoman, skewed her legs to one side, removed her boots, slipped on a pair of high heels and, as she stretched the back straps of her shoes over the heel of each foot, her calves flexed under dark hose. She wore a simple, long sleeve, slim fitting, black dress, and Lenny thought that maybe he should have looked for the napkins that matched the tablecloth. Many women on 104th Street wore black dresses, but they didn’t look like Vi, Lenny sighed.

  In the hospital he had been too distracted, too concerned about Frankie to really appreciate that Vi was still a very pretty woman — slimmer than she once was but still round where it counted, according to Lenny, given his imprinting from Captain Beltrani’s long-ago pictures of nude Rubenesque beauties. His eyes followed the curve of Vi’s legs to the hem of her dress. As her eyes examined the living room, his eyes examined her.

  “Nothing’s changed,” Lenny said, but immediately regretted his words. Vi didn’t answer. He followed her into the dining room where Ina was holding a water glass for Frankie to fill.

  “Guess there’s no need for me to introduce the two of you,” Vi said.

  “No, Mommy. I already told Frankie who I am.”

  Frankie smiled. He approached Vi and kissed her cheek. “Sorry for being a jerk in the hospital.” Before Vi had the chance to respond, Frankie turned back to Ina. “Okay, let’s see if the water is boiling for the macaroni.” Ina followed him back to the kitchen.

  Given that she was a bit plump and had long blond hair, Ina more closely resembled the Vi Lenny had first met than the Vi who now ran her fingers along the dining room table cloth with the mismatched napkins.

  “Well, I guess that’s going well.” Vi’s voice was small and quivering. Her eyes were moist, as were Lenny’s. “As if they’ve always known each other,” she said. Lenny nodded.

  Frozen behind the dining room chairs, they stood still as they exchanged polite small talk. Lenny never spoke without moving his hands, but he clutched the back of a dining room chair, and the veins in his hands swelled as if he were doing isometrics. Lenny explained that Filomena had passed in August, that Angie had divorced, that Tony was married and had twin boys, and that Irish and Amelia also had children. They were already married when Vi first met them.

  “Please sit,” Lenny finally said. “I don’t know why we’re standing here. I’m just going to check on things in the kitchen.”

  Frankie poured the macaroni into a colander while Ina stood next to him, and a burst of steam rose around them adding magic to the moment. Lenny wiped away a tear and took the large, shallow bowl from the kitchen table and placed it on the counter next to Frankie.

  “Italian food is my favorite,” Ina said, “except for sushi.”

  Ina possessed Vi’s once uninhibited sparkle, and she livened the otherwise banal dinner conversation with stories about her pretty second-grade teacher, misbehaving classmates, funny piano teacher, and strict dance teacher. She was the precocious only child of a doting academic and as voracious an eater as she was a talker.

  Lenny tried not to watch the way Vi’s fork pierced the rigatoni, the way she brought the fork to her lips, and how her tongue found the dab of sauce at the corner of her mouth. He envied the dab of sauce. Each time she glanced at him, he’d look away for a moment and then returned his gaze.

  “Are you going to eat?” Frankie said to Lenny, and Lenny cleared his throat, smiled, nodded, and scooped up a forkful of macaroni.

  “Everything is delicious,” Vi said. “Filomena taught you well. I remember she was an excellent cook.”

  “Who is Filomena?” Ina said.

  “She was my grandma.”

  Ina scrunched up her face as if confused. “Did she die?”

  Frankie talked a bit about Filomena, but Lenny remained quiet and finished eating. “I’ll get the gravy meat,” he said.

  In the kitchen, Lenny ladled the meat from the remaining sauce simmering on the stove. He cut the threads on the braciole and returned to the dining room with the platter of sausage, braciole, and meatballs.

  “Wow! You people eat a lot,” Ina said. Everyone laughed, including Lenny, and Ina continued to entertain them with her stories.

  After dinner Frankie stood to help Lenny clear the table, but Vi suggested that she help instead, and Ina asked to see the store. “Mommy told me all about it.”

  Frankie nodded and led her from dining room, through the open French door, and into the office, while Vi and Lenny gathered plates.

  “She’s a great kid,” Lenny said.

  “Thank you. Frankie is everything I knew he would be.”

  Lenny scraped the plates, placed them in the dishwasher, and watched Vi as she walked back towards the dining room. Before she returned he shifted his gaze to the dishwasher. “Speaking of how Frankie turned out,” Vi said, “I was right about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You are a remarkable father and a better mother than I could have been — at least at the time.”

  Maybe it was because she had just spoken the words that she had written years ago, but Lenny took out his wallet, removed the yellowed slip of paper, and handed it to Vi. They sat at the kitchen table and she unfolded the note and placed it on the table between them. Her eyes were moist.

  He didn’t show her the note out of malice. It was as if he was returning something important that she had misplaced. She stared at it for some time before she slid it back across the enamel-top table.

  “Ina’s father treated me as poorly as I treated you. He disappeared a week before she was born.”

  “Karma’s a bitch,” Lenny said. “I read that somewhere.”

  They both laughed. In fact, Lenny couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed that hard, but slowly their laughter settled into an awkward silence. Silence competed with words and often won out.

  “She likes Frankie and you. I can tell. But what’s not to like?”

  They held each other’s gaze until Vi looked away and fiddled with her thin silver bracelet. Lenny folded the yellow note and slipped it back into his wallet.

  “Does Frankie have anyone special in his life?”

  Lenny thought of Gennaro and almost corrected her with had. “Frankie’s gay,” Lenny said, which really didn’t answer her question, but it seemed like an opportunity to get that out of the way.

  Vi smiled and nodded. She ran her finger along the bottom of her right earlobe and gave her earing a gentle tug. “Before the fiasco with Ina’s father, I lived with a woman for 6 years. Guess Frankie inherited more than my green eyes.” She smiled, and for the first time since their meeting in the hospital cafeteria, Lenny saw glimmers of the girl with the bangles and long blond hair. Their
conversation turned to Ina, and it was clear that Vi adored her. Lenny listened as Vi went on and on. She had turned out to be a devoted mother after all.

  30

  Unlike the forlorn children pining over absent mothers in those ubiquitous orphan and foundling, young-adult books and movies, Frankie had never missed Vi, and he was rarely curious about her, at least not until he saw her photo on the computer. However, when he kissed her cheek, ripples of emotion surfaced — mostly feelings of betraying Filomena and Angie — they were the mothers who had always been there for him, not Vi. Maybe there were other feelings, a primal connection, a memory from before a severed umbilical cord, but Frankie already had more than he could be expected to deal with.

  Opening himself up to Ina was less complicated. She was a child. It was a stretch for Frankie to think that they shared the same mother — similar DNA, but not the same mother. They also shared not knowing, and that idea of them having gone about their lives unaware of the each other’s existence intrigued Frankie. He was a bit thrown by Ina’s barrage of comments and questions and by the way she stared at him as if she were trying to decide if in fact it was true that they were siblings, albeit half siblings, but he appreciated her energy and yielded to her persistence when she didn’t accept his shrugs or one-word answers. The subtext of all Ina said seemed to be: I’m here now so pay attention. And he did. During supper and then some, Frankie didn’t think of Gennaro or the cartoline postale. This was quite remarkable since Gennaro or anything related to Gennaro was all that he thought about since his stay in the hospital.

  While Lenny and Vi cleared the table, Frankie showed Ina the store. He explained that they should not turn on the overhead lights because customers would appear like moths tapping on the lit windows. He flapped his arms as if he were a giant moth. Ina giggled. “You’re like the man in Kafka’s book.”

  “What?” Frankie said. He was stunned.

  “Oh some crazy story Mommy read to me. She’s always reading me crazy stories.”