by Tony Romano
The other thoughts, the more recent thoughts that coiled around and through him and stabbed him with their precision, he could usually keep at bay. All he had to do was organize the register or stack the tumblers at the bar, the daily rituals that he yearned for in the middle of the blue-black night. But a wayward glance from his brother was all it took to remind him he’d brought misfortune to his family. Events didn’t happen in isolation. He had sinned, and sin would follow him. This became his credo, the words he would live and die by. The only consolation that wasn’t really a consolation at all was that his shame was private. He had to face only his brother, whose reprimand remained unspoken but constant. Agostino had spent a lifetime ridiculing Vince’s ancient way of thinking, and now Agostino had become his brother.
Agostino had never confessed a single deed to Angela Rosa as he’d intended. He didn’t want to hurt her further. But he hated the idea that he’d gotten away with something. The gravestone he had picked out, a task he insisted on doing alone, was a constant reminder that he’d gotten away with nothing.
Walking helped. He usually took a circuitous route past the church, sometimes stopping to light a candle, and then ambled toward Chicago Avenue to the Hub movie theater and watched whatever played on the screen. Sometimes he’d walk in on a cartoon and leave a few minutes later. Or he’d catch the last few minutes of a musical or leave in the middle of a love story he knew would end tragically.
The girl in the ticket window called him Mr. Agostino and tried to point out the times the shows began. She told him what was coming next week, told him to have a nice day. Agostino nodded and thanked her but couldn’t say much more. An odd feeling would pass over him then, the feeling that he missed his old self. He’d walk past her, past the candy counter and the first pungent wave of popcorn, and ease himself down into one of the front rows, bathing in the cinemascopic images flashing before him.
Over a period of three days he saw most of The Pride and the Passion with Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren. Sinatra tried to pass himself off as a Spaniard by combing his hair down, but Agostino couldn’t get past the hair. Listening to Sinatra’s music, Agostino often felt as if he knew the singer. He felt that, other than the voice, the two of them were alike in many ways, and at times he even wondered what his crooning friend would do in one situation or another. What would Frank do? But Sinatra on the screen as a Spaniard or a dancer or a leading man did little for Agostino. He was just another actor muddling his way through lines someone else had written. The only reason he watched as much of the movie as he did was that he imagined his own hair pushed down over his forehead and imagined himself playing across from Sophia Loren, the only illusion that made him feel like his old self again.
What else could he do? When he went home to try to bridge the widening gulf between Angela Rosa and him, she shut him out. She fixed his meals and washed his clothes, but she wanted him to know that her grief was superior to his. Her grief reached depths he could never know. Agostino would have been happy to grant her this edge, if only he had had the chance.
When he walked, he thought of words he could offer to soften her. He thought of rocking her as he’d done for days after the funeral. He pictured trips they could take to faraway places where they knew no one. He imagined bringing her home to her mother, the home they could have had in the old country. After they were married, they could have stayed. The possibility had been a faint one, but it had pressed into him. Had they stayed, maybe they could have avoided all this. He would have a small shop with a lead-sturdy sewing machine bolted to the floorboards and surround himself with spools of multicolored threads. Out back would be a vegetable garden bartered from some farmer whose furrowed fields never ended. That’s what he missed. Fields that went on forever.
In the city everything came up on something else, choking him. One-way streets and dead-end roads. Boulevards and avenues jammed with automobiles and their blue exhaust. Only the sky went on, and he found himself gazing upon it often. This was the same sky that held him as a boy, the same sky that Benito once glimpsed and that had dwarfed Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren when they filmed their movie about the real Spaniards who sweated under the very same expansive patch of blue. He found himself thinking more and more in circles like this, which made his own problems seem small.
The Pride and the Passion had been held over another week, and Agostino watched the last twenty minutes and a newsreel about Elvis Presley. Walking out of the theater, he enjoyed the assault of light, the painful squint of it. He meandered back to the bar, an hour of daylight left.
Vince was on the phone with his woman friend, Carmel, but cut short his conversation when Agostino walked in. Vince seemed especially jittery lately, stumbling around as if he’d forgotten to do something, checking his pocket for lost change.
“How is the hip?” Agostino asked.
They sat at their booth and lapsed into Italian. Vince glanced down at the invoices he’d been thumbing through earlier.
“The hip?” Vince repeated. “It is always there,” he said.
“The pain?”
“The hip.”
“And Santo? Where is Santo?” Agostino asked.
“I told him to take the night off. There is nothing to do here.”
Agostino got up and walked to the front window, peeked out, paced behind the bar to make sure they were ready for the night, then sat at the booth again. He could never sit still lately. When he sat, he felt as if someone were holding him underwater. Even in the theater he would take frequent breaks to the men’s room or stand in the lobby to catch his breath. The feel of the lobby’s soft carpet under his feet pacified him, a sea of wine-colored crushed velvet, the dim light hiding the syrupy black spots stamped throughout the rug.
“I talked with old man Dominick,” Agostino said. “He does not want his children to have the building. They never visit, he says. Why should they get anything? So he wants to sell. He asked me.”
“Do you want to stay?”
“Eh—Angela Rosa. I do not think she will ever leave.”
“She stays inside still?”
“She goes to the store. That’s all. She will not even sit on the porch.”
“Give her time.”
“Tomorrow morning, I was thinking. Maybe you can drive me to Polk Brothers. I want to buy a television.”
“Agostino Peccatori with a television!”
“I thought Angela Rosa, she might watch.”
“Maybe.”
“Everyone has television now. I thought—”
“Well, sure. Tomorrow morning, then.”
Restless, Agostino got up to flick on the lights out front. On the way back to the booth he pushed in the chairs around the tables. “And my daughter,” he said. “She asks about a phone all the time. Maybe I will call tomorrow. Let them bring a phone.”
“Ah, and maybe she stays home. She can watch television and talk on the phone.”
“Eh. What else am I going to do? Why should I save my money? So I can grow old and have no one to give it to? Like old man Dominick?”
“And Santo? He will watch television?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I only said, maybe Santo will stay home, too. If you are going to have television, maybe he will watch. Stay home. Keep him out of trouble.”
And there it was, Vince’s jittery hands, the absent reach to his pockets. Mock surprise registered on his raised brows.
“Why do you talk this way?” Agostino demanded. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Vince said. “What do you mean what do I mean?”
“Santo is in trouble?”
Vince groped for a cigarette.
Santo was in trouble, thought Agostino. Of course. He’d sensed the uneasiness between his brother and his son for some time but hadn’t really thought anything of it till now. Santo had gotten some girl in trouble. He was his father’s son after all.
“Tell me,” Agostino said.
Now Vince got up. He car
ried his ashtray to the bar and set it there, lit a cigarette, placed the ashtray back in his palm, and paced.
“Vincenzo,” Agostino called. He rose from the booth and followed Vince, keeping several paces behind. “Tell me about Santo and the girl he got pregnant. There’s nothing you can tell me that will…I am vaccinated against bad news. Answer me…Vincenzo. Tell me he stole a car, then. Tell me anything.”
“So you are accustomed to bad news, are you?” Vince puffed furiously now, shuffling from one end of the floor to the other. “Bad news follows you, does it? Is that what you think? Well, maybe you are right.” He stopped at the window and peered out at the trees that would shed their leaves soon. When he reached the end of his cigarette, he seemed suddenly calm.
“Remember Dante? Maybe this is Purgatorio,” he said, still gazing out the window. “Do you ever think about that? That we are nowhere. That we are standing here, you and me, two brothers, in our own little place, but we are nowhere. We were not good enough or bad enough and now we are stuck here where we are not good enough or bad enough again. I look at everyone else and they are going somewhere. But you and I, we are stuck here. Nowhere.”
“Thank you for including me in your hell,” Agostino muttered.
“We are not there yet, my brother.” He snubbed out what remained of his cigarette. “Santo knows,” he said. “Your son knows. He knows who he is. And he will not be stuck here with us for long, I am afraid.”
Agostino recalled hearing the expression spell it out for me—it had to be from radio or from one of his walk-in customers—and now said this to his brother, which caused Vince to laugh. Vince nodded and said he would spell it out. He told Agostino what Santo knew, slowly and evenly, without a trace of satisfaction or reprimand. He told him about Santo seeing the old woman and how he probably knew the rest, too. Santo was a smart boy. “He wanted to know the woman’s name.”
“My Santo,” Agostino said. He held back a sigh. He reached into his pants and pulled out a pocket comb and considered running it across his hair but just fanned his thumb across the plastic teeth, listening to each plink. After a while he pushed through the swinging doors and slipped into the back to wash his hands. He leaned into the sink to hear the blast from the faucet. He dipped his face into his cupped hands and, for a moment, forgot himself in the cold hard splash.
She wanted to forget. She didn’t think that was asking too much. She wanted to spread across her bed, shut her eyes to the world, and for five minutes stop the wind tunnel of thoughts that coursed through her. It wasn’t that she needed to be alone. She could deal with the outside world all right. Her cold, hard stares caused everyone to cower, and they let her be, biding their time. Time would be on their side, they probably thought. Time would heal—though she couldn’t begin to imagine this. No, all the mindless worldly concerns didn’t concern her one way or another. It was the internal that plagued her night and day. When she closed her eyes she felt a slow, rootless spinning. The physicality of this would eventually become grounded in the flow of her blood or whatever it was that stopped the turning, but her thoughts still floated above her in treadmill persistence.
Benito stared out at her through flat, brown eyes, appearing always composed, his dark hair patted down in long, perfect swipes. Sometimes his little mouth would move, and she wanted to reach out to him and lift him, pull him away from all the hurt. She felt a power wash over her then, a power she hadn’t felt since she was a girl, back when she believed with all her girl might that she could shape the world through her own pure wishing, that she could right any wrong. Now when she felt that power in her jangled bones, she clutched at it with a desperation that surprised her. Angela Rosa could rescue her son finally with pure will.
More often, though, she simply replayed the awful last day. She felt her son’s cheek, warm against her own, the soft brush of it. She remembered his fingers running through her hair, the milky smell of his pink arms. She worked and worked to resist the other images, Benito fighting for air, coughing up blood, but those images always sucked her in, sinister and seductive in their pull. The apartment had been filled that last night with the deep breathing of sleep. Only she and Benito remained awake, an eerie, peaceful pall blanketing them. She was glad that everyone could slip away into their dreams for a while. They rested, assured they would rise in the morning to a better day, and this eased Angela Rosa’s worries some.
She paced the long halls of the apartment with Benito in her arms. Every few minutes she tried to feed him and even offered her breast, which would no longer yield nourishment. She tried anything to break the cycle of the last twenty-four hours. A song returned to her, something her mother once sang. The words held no meaning for her, but she heard her mother’s sweet pitch in her own voice. She rocked Benito, changed him, laid him in his crib, picked him up, pointed to lights outside the living-room window. Superior Street, she whispered. This was their life. Benito responded with the same plangent stare, the tugging at the ear, the pouting of the lips, dry and cracked. He brought his tiny fists to his eyes and rubbed them raw. His skin looked paper-thin, translucent pink.
Over and over she gave herself five more minutes. If Benito didn’t drink something in five minutes she would wake Victoria and have her phone the doctor at his home above the office. Victoria would have to walk to the corner, though—she couldn’t wake old man Dominick at this hour. Angela Rosa pictured the walk—two blocks down Superior to Ashland, cross the street to the phone booth, deposit the dime, wait for it to drop, listen for the dial tone and the ringing, the endless ringing, and demand help. Would Victoria be able to convince him to come? She was too American. To her family she could snarl for no good reason, but she became a lamb to everyone else. The doctor would simply give Victoria instructions and promise to visit in the morning.
So Angela Rosa waited. Sitting on the living-room carpet, bracing herself against the couch, she waited. Five more minutes. Then five more. She let Victoria sleep. She let them all dream. Until the coughing. A hacklike cough that wouldn’t let go. She patted him on the back, lightly at first, then with a resounding slap. He coughed harder still, one racking cough after another, his little face inflamed. Wheezing finally, he caught his breath and heaved a sigh. And that’s when she spotted it. A single drop of blood on his right shoulder where the sleeve began. Her baby was coughing up blood.
She couldn’t recall the words she uttered then, but something hoarse erupted from her throat, a wail, a plea for help maybe. She needed to see. She needed more light. For a full second or more she had to think where the light switch was. She flicked it on finally, and the bare bulb washed the room in pale amber light. She gently pushed the end of a bath towel into Benito’s mouth and the towel came out matted red. Again she screamed.
Victoria padded out first. When she saw the panic in her mother’s eyes, she turned pale. She nearly buckled over when she saw the towel. Did he fall? she asked. Did the baby fall? She searched for signs of a cut, feverishly examining her brother’s head, his arms.
Angela Rosa couldn’t respond. She let out another wail. A light went on in the kitchen. Where is the doctor’s number? Victoria wanted to know. Where is the number? Angela Rosa pointed to the kitchen, and Victoria raced off. I’ll go downstairs, she said. I’ll go downstairs and call right away.
Agostino stumbled in, his eyes swollen with sleep. He scratched at the back of his neck and stood there looking puzzled.
“Auito,” she said. Help me.
Agostino took Benito in his arms. What is this blood? he asked, suddenly alert.
“Auito,” she pleaded, sobbing now.
“Angela Rosa!”
“O mio Dio,” she muttered over and over. “Gesù Cristo.”
The blood, Agostino demanded. Where did it come from?
She couldn’t move. She wanted to show her husband the blood, but her arms wouldn’t move. “Mio Dio.”
Santo suddenly appeared, then Anthony and Alfredo, all of them rooted at the far end
of the room, waiting for permission to move.
I have to show him, Angela Rosa kept thinking. I have to show him the blood. She folded the towel in on itself and pushed a clean portion into Benito’s mouth. The stench of blood filled her with new dread, but the towel came out less bloody this time.
There, she said. My baby’s bleeding.
Agostino felt his son’s forehead. He’s not burning up like before, he said. He pried open Benito’s small mouth and searched inside and shook his head. He glanced up at his sons, and Angela Rosa saw the question in all their eyes. What do we do? She knew they looked to her to nurse them. But this time she was immobile.
Victoria marched in and announced that the doctor would be there in fifteen minutes. She took Benito from her father and wiped Benito’s face with a cool wet rag she’d brought with her. She dabbed his mouth, talking to him, telling him that everything would be all right. She put him over her shoulder and patted his back while she paced, gently rocking him with each step. Tears began to well up in her eyes. Your sister’s here, she whispered. Victoria will take care of you.
Angela Rosa crawled to the window and looked for a car. She prayed silently but hung her hopes on the Tuscan doctor who smelled of stale chestnuts and spoke in reassuring tones. He’d glide through the door and in one fluid motion he’d loom over Benito, checking his eyes and his ears, pulling out his silver instruments one by one from his black bag.
Thank God for Victoria, she thought. She needed a few moments to gather herself. She had never felt so crippled. Her daughter’s whispers covered her like a thick quilt.
Nobody said a word then, each of them alone in their thoughts. They gazed at the fibers in the rust-colored carpet, studied the chips in the enamel at the baseboard, glancing up at Benito now and then, hoping he would remain calm. His head snug against his sister’s shoulder, Benito closed his eyes and breathed evenly.
Angela Rosa prayed to her old neighbor Louise. In death, Louise had become her guardian, a palpable force in Angela Rosa’s private life. Her placid smile would press itself into Angela Rosa’s thoughts throughout the day. She asked Louise now to ask God to take her instead. This would be the only way the world would make sense. If God took her son, He would be taking her as well. There was no reason for both of them to die.