The Saint of Lost Things

by Christopher Castellani

  “They have the good stuff on Sundays,” said Julian, which was not a lie.

  They talked for a while on the corner of Fifth and Union, near the bus stop. She was to wait here for her brother to pick her up. The streetlamps were lit, and the shopkeepers stood in their doorways with their hands on their hips, waiting for six o’clock so they could close. Julian shook his head “no, grazie” at Rocco Lamberti, who held up a small bag of rolls for him. His arms were growing tired from carrying Helen’s groceries, but he wasn’t yet ready to give them up.

  Helen talked openly about her life. She and Abigail lived with her mother, in a small apartment above the home of her sister, brother-in-law, and teenaged nephew. The Rileys had lived in Wilmington for a hundred years, she said, and just now they’d begun to move up in the world. Her father, who’d passed away not long ago, had gone into law. Her son was a sophomore at Sale-sianum, a private Catholic school for smart boys. She had a cousin who worked for the district attorney, another studying to be an engineer. The brother-in-law she lived with was a police officer, as her own husband had been.

  “He was killed,” Helen said. “My husband. I don’t know if you knew that.”

  “I didn’t,” Julian said. “I’m very sorry.” He set the bags on the ground. “I met him, too? Christmas Eve?”

  “Oh,” she said, confused for a moment. “No. Jerry died in the war. In Poland. That man at Mrs. Stella’s—well, let’s just say that when you’re a widow at forty-three, all the old men think they’re your Prince Charming.”

  Julian looked out at the street. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean, when I said I would help with the vendors—”

  “Not you!” she said. She touched his arm. The wind whipped through her hair, unloosing it from the clip in the back. “Gosh, what am I saying? You—I feel like I know you already. I always tell my students: once you see someone perform, they belong to you forever. And I saw you many times, Giulio.”

  “Julian,” he said.

  “Julian?”

  Eventually, after the explanations, a squad car pulled up, and a blond officer rolled down his window. He eyed Julian. “Helen!” he called. “You all right?”

  “Of course,” she said, picking up the bags.

  The back door opened, and Abigail ran out. She hugged Helen around the waist. “Mommy! What’d you buy for me?” she asked.

  Helen pulled the candy stick from her pocket. “Cherry. That OK?” To her brother-in-law, she said, “And before you ask, yes, I got your cigarettes.”

  “Good girl,” he said.

  Helen and Julian made plans to meet on this same corner next Sunday at nine a.m., before the best produce was picked over. If tomorrow were not Easter, he might have suggested they meet then. She’d come straight from church—St. Anne’s—and bring Abigail.

  Julian’s dinner that night consisted of chickpeas and pretzels. There was no other food in the house. He dressed the chickpeas with a little olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. The pretzels he dunked in white wine. He ate alone at the kitchen table, and though the radio was tuned to the Bob Hope Show on WDEL—its usual spot at nine o’clock on Saturdays—Julian grew impatient. He flipped through the stations and came first to the WAMS Barn Dance, then WILM’s Country Time, and finally to WFIL’s Dancing Party. He left it there. All the lights were on, the drapes drawn. He sat on the arm of the couch for a while and listened to the quicksteps, the sambas. Somewhere in Wilmington, a crowd of couples was gathered in the room where this band played. The men were leading the ladies across a shiny floor, and someone was taping it all for the poor souls unlucky enough not to experience it live.

  Mamma, Papà, and Baby Giulio watched him from the end table, concerned. How he wished they really could see him—not just here, standing and extending his arms, practicing the one-two-three of the Viennese waltz, the one dance he knew—but in eight days, on the corner of Fifth and Union, when he took Helen by the arm and gave her a tour of their neighborhood. How he wished his mother and father could assure him that letting someone new into his heart, as he had once prepared to do for the Dellucci girl, was not a betrayal of their memory. At this moment, it did not feel like one. At this moment—a little drunk, quite hungry—he could imagine no better way to honor them than to prove himself worthy of love.

  FOR THE FIRST DATE of his life, Julian Fabbri chose opening night at Trattoria Renato. Friday, May 21. The place was booked for a week solid, but Renato cut him a deal: a table for two in exchange for one night of accordion music one Saturday before the end of the summer. Because, in May, the end of the summer might as well be the end of time, Julian accepted. Had Renato made him wash dishes, he’d have agreed to that, too. His plan required Renato’s restaurant; without it, he had only himself to impress his date, and he feared that would be far from enough.

  He learned that Antonio and Maddalena had reservations for seven p.m. and would just be eating their dessert when Julian arrived. He’d wear his best suit, and walk arm in arm with the lovely brunette. Who’s that woman? Antonio would ask Maddalena. How could Julian have kept this news from us? They’d signal to him from across the restaurant, and Julian would say to his girl, “Oh, look! My friends are here. Let me introduce you.”

  And then how deliciously he would wind his way among the tables, nodding to faces he’d surely recognize from the neighborhood or Mrs. Stella’s. All the whispering they’d do, huddled over their dinner candles—surely Helen would sense it, and feel she’d made the right choice in accepting Julian’s invitation. He’d keep his shoulders high and his feet straight, as Maddalena had taught him; he’d take slow, careful steps, careful not to rush. The trick was to pretend the world adored him and envied this new woman on his arm; the trick was to forget that, without Maddalena, he’d never have had the courage to ask her to dinner in the first place.

  “Antonio and Maddalena Grasso,” he’d say, his voice steady and formal. “This is Helen Riley.”

  “Molto piacere.”

  “She’s Irish,” he’d say. “Believe it or not.” Everyone would laugh.

  “Nobody’s perfect,” she’d say, squeezing his hand, and immediately they would fall for her, as Julian had.

  But the night did not go as planned. First, Officer Stanley greeted them in the parking lot and asked if they’d seen anything suspicious around here the past few weeks, which made Helen nervous. “Is this a bad neighborhood?” she asked.

  Then he led her into the safety of the trattoria: his head high, her hand clasped firmly in his. Though the ad had promised a romantic setting, it was louder here than Mrs. Stella’s, with a great deal of dishes clanking in the open kitchen. Julian scanned the crowd, and instead of finding Maddalena and Antonio, a sea of unfamiliar animated faces stared blankly back at him, chewed, rolled their eyes, blinked, sipped their wine. He stood beside the lion fountain, unsure what to do.

  “What’s wrong?” Helen asked.

  It was not until Renato greeted him that Julian learned what had become of them, why another couple now sat in their booth. According to Renato, Maddalena had gone to Wilmington Hospital the night before, and though the child—a girl—came out healthy, the mother was in great danger.

  “It was too early,” said Julian.

  Renato nodded, folded his hands and raised them up to God. “It’s in His hands now.”

  “The poor woman,” said Helen. “How old is she?”

  Julian was shaking. His mind raced. How terrified Maddalena must have been when the labor started, and she realized the danger she faced. How he wished he’d become a doctor—a scientist, a surgeon, a man of substance—someone useful to the world. What good did books and music do in this case, in most cases? Why bother loving people, if you couldn’t save them?

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Helen said, and stroked his arm.

  Renato was holding two leather-bound menus. “Life goes on,” he said. “Let’s get you to your table.”

  15

  The Sign

>   WHEN A BLIZZARD HIT Wilmington many years back, Antonio woke two hours early, walked six miles through the storm, and still reached the Ford plant on time. In nearly a decade, he has kept pace on the assembly line through two broken fingers—one on each hand—and chills from fevers over a hundred. He has put his name in the hat for every holiday shift, including Easter and Christmas Eve, and has never eaten Thanksgiving dinner anywhere but the wobbly card table in the break room. But today, Thursday, May 27, 1954, for the first time in his life, Antonio Grasso does not show up for work.

  Maddalena’s condition has not changed, nor is there the promise of change. The doctor will not commit to a prediction; the nurses will not say anything the doctor has not already said. Meanwhile, the baby grows stronger. The color returns to the doctor’s face when he mentions her. It is something of a miracle, he says, how she maintains her weight. Father Moravia declares that Mamma and Ida, who have prayed continually for her, have helped achieve this miracle—in partnership with our Almighty Father. The doctor can neither confirm nor deny this. He can only stand in the doorway and order the nurses in and out.

  What prevents Antonio from going to work is that he simply cannot get out of his chair. He cannot remember the last time he has slept, though it may have been while driving. When he tries to stitch together a sequence of events from the past few days, he finds many stretches of hours unaccounted for. He sees Nunzia and Nina on the floor of the waiting room, banging the heads of two dolls together. Through the glass he sees the inside of his daughter’s screaming mouth, her lips and gums pink as ham. There is Father Moravia kissing the cross on his necklace; spittle in the corner of Giulio Fabbri’s lips; the stoplights on Union going red, green, red, then green again, as cars honk and drive around him. A fat woman steps in front of Renato’s nephew as he sweeps the outside of the trattoria; yellow petals fall from the tulips on the windowsill; black stubbly hair appears on Maddalena’s legs. Those pale legs. It seems there is no life in her at all. And yet the hair grows.

  Until now, Antonio has stayed strong. He has worked from six to six, eaten a brief dinner at home or at Mrs. Stella’s, then returned here to the hospital, where he paces and fades in and out of sleep. More than a few times, he has gone for a drive. “To clear my head,” he has told his mother, who spends the evenings at Maddalena’s side with her rosary beads. He went once to Westover Hills, once to Battery Park just to stare at the water. But mostly he drives up and down Riverview Drive.

  Five days after the grand opening, a banner announcing GRAND OPENING still draped the entrance to Renato’s restaurant. Yet there was no prominent sign to indicate which restaurant had opened so grandly. From the road, passersby could see tables, a bar, and waiters carrying trays, but for all they knew it was another steakhouse run by a Greek. During his brief visit to the hospital, Renato had explained that the neon sign he’d ordered had been delayed. Furious with the two men who’d designed it, he told them that for every day that passed without the sign, he’d knock ten percent from the total price. The men were brothers who’d just immigrated from his mother’s village, and Renato had promised Rosa he’d give them the business. In the meantime, Renato had tried writing the name of the restaurant in black marker on the GRAND OPENING banner, but the ink didn’t stick to the slick surface, and by the next day the rain had washed it off completely. Until the two brothers came through, Renato had to settle for the name written in big letters on the inside of a pizza box and taped to the window beside the main door.

  Last night, after the guests left and the busboys had just begun to mop the floors, Renato, Cassie, Buzzy and—was that Marcie, in gloves and a feathered hat?—gathered on the walkway outside the entrance to the trattoria. They faced the drawn blinds of the front window. Antonio watched through his windshield, as if at a drive-in movie, from his spot across the street.

  Buzzy held a newspaper over his head as protection from the light rain that had just begun to gather strength. The wind lifted his curls, revealing in the harsh light of the streetlamp the bald patch at the crown of his head. Cassie wore a dress that fell at her knees in a ruffle, probably to show off her legs.

  A young man peeked through one of the blinds and gave them the thumbs-up. Cassie raised her right hand and extended one finger, then two, then three. At three, the blinds came up, revealing the bright neon sign—TRATTORIA RENATO—that spanned the entire window. TRATTORIA was lit in green script and formed into a semicircle; RENATO was in red and connected the ends of the semicircle in a straight line. In the space between the two words glowed the bright white outline of a wineglass and a loaf of bread.

  Cassie was clapping. The light danced across her face in the rain.

  The two brothers appeared in the window and bowed.

  Renato put his arms around Cassie and walked her back inside. They disappeared among the waiters and busboys as one by the one the lights went off. Buzzy and Marcie drove away. The sign remained lit. Before getting into their car, Renato and Cassie stopped for a moment to admire it. Renato traced the letters through the glass with his finger.

  After everyone left, Antonio drove around the back of the trattoria, into the neighborhood of Collins Park, and waited. It was one o’clock in the morning. The rain let up. Clouds raced southeast, streaking across the moon, toward the Atlantic. He sat in the car with the headlights off, the windows rolled down and WFIL on low. He heard June Valli’s “I Understand,” and Jo Stafford’s “Make Love to Me.” Everybody’s sleepin’ so it’s quite all right.

  Collins Park was a quiet, unfinished neighborhood of ranches and small two-story duplexes and split-levels; each house had a quarter acre of property if it had an inch. Soon the lady peering through her drapes at the stranger in the idling car would send out her husband to ask questions. Before that could happen, though, Antonio drove to a different spot, cut the engine, opened the trunk, grabbed the crowbar, and stuffed it down the leg of his pants.

  He marched through the tall grass of the empty lot that bordered the back of the restaurant. It was a mess back here: scrap metal, trash, discarded magazines, cigarette butts. A place for the kitchen workers to throw dice or fight or catch some air. Antonio gripped the crowbar through his right pocket and limped his way to the front of the trattoria.

  He had stopped in for a visit a few times during the renovation, just to pay his respects to Renato, but this was the first chance he had to see the finished space up close. The tables, draped in crisp white cloth, were arranged in neat rows of two- and four-tops and set with gold-colored plates. The liquor bottles sat on illuminated shelves behind the bar. The floors had been buffed and polished. The bulbs of the elaborate chandelier above the maître d’ station bloomed from multicolored glass petals. Circular booths, upholstered in black leather, lined the left wall. It made Mrs. Stella’s—its muraled walls plagued with cracks, its oil paintings hung crookedly—seem all the more dismal. Any customer walking in here would feel inspired to open their wallets, if just to live up to the decor.

  According to Renato, every table had been booked for the first four nights. He had reserved a booth for Antonio, Maddalena, and his parents. Ida refused to come without Mario, who referred to the trattoria with the same words Renato used for Mrs. Stella’s: “the enemy.” Papà believed in staying on good terms with everyone, especially your competition, because you never knew whose help you might need in the future. “Wilmington is big enough for two pasta-and-gravy places,” he told Mario, but there was no convincing him. He protected Mrs. Stella’s with as much force as he protected Nunzia and Nina. Any threat to it was a threat to the future of those two little girls.

  Papà would not approve of what Antonio was about to do. He would remind him that Renato had been his best friend for nearly half his life, that if Italians didn’t protect each other, they had no chance in this country. He would tell Antonio to think of how well Renato had treated Maddalena the day he’d brought her into the pizzeria. Had not Renato remembered Maddalena’s birthdays more reliably
than Antonio himself, and made sure to steal him fresh flowers to take home to her?

  Antonio hesitated. He ducked around the corner of the restaurant, suddenly convinced he’d misjudged his good friend, that he was no better than a jealous and ungrateful child. Then he remembered Renato’s relentless teasing after that first visit with Maddalena, and the knowing looks he’d exchanged with Buzzy whenever they brought up the subject of her beauty. As the years of their friendship unfolded before him, it became clear that Renato had never failed to undo his few acts of kindness. “Go talk to that blonde in the corner,” he’d said one night on Market Street, long before Maddalena arrived. “I hear she won’t put up a fight.” And then just as Antonio had convinced her to take a walk with him, there came Renato dragging him off to some emergency that turned out to be a card game with Buzzy. Countless times Renato had pulled these stupid tricks, and Antonio had put up with them.

  It had occurred to Antonio over the past few months that his own nights with Cassie must have played a part in Renato’s sudden show of love and devotion. Cassie was the only girl the two of them had shared; though they never spoke of it, they knew they had come within months of each other, first Renato, then Antonio. Now Renato had reclaimed her for good, a victory of sorts over the man she’d turned to when she’d grown tired of him the first time.

  All this was in Antonio’s head as he huddled on the side of the trattoria the night Renato and Cassie unveiled their tacky sign. This and the fear that God, after all the songs and blessings and kissing of crucifixes, had grown as cruel as the lowest of the men He’d created. The murderers and kidnappers, the swindlers and thieves. There was no hope, not in heaven or on earth, if not even God could show mercy. Antonio wiped his face with his sleeve. The stale smell of the hospital clung to him.

  Like Maddalena, he believed in destiny. Some force stronger than himself had led him here, just as it had led her to America and the two of them to each other. This same force—unmanageable, unpredictable—dictated even his unimportant everyday decisions: the blue shirt over the white, the king of diamonds over the four of spades. If he did not call on destiny, he had no nobler way to explain that he did not feel in control of his body when he stepped from the shadows on the side of Trattoria Renato, glanced once at the road to make sure no cars were passing, and smashed the glass of the front window. With the crowbar, he pulled apart the neon sign. The words unraveled in loud pops. A fizz of light, a slow hiss, one letter after another shattering. This time, when Antonio fell to his knees and wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve, all he could smell was whiskey.