by Tony Romano
She had Lupa to watch over her. And they had dragged Victoria with them as well. They wanted to uproot her. They didn’t like the changes they’d seen in her, smoking right in front of them, arriving home at all hours of the night. They would drag her back to dirt roads and sheds for toilets and make her tend to the fields and prepare dinners and knock out all that American nonsense that filled her head.
Uncle Vince and I picked them up at the airport. I sat at the arrival gate fingering the rosary in my pocket. I felt like one of the old churchwomen. Vince paced before me puffing away at his cigarette. I imagined holy incense curling out of the caked ash at the tip. Walking through the jetway soon would be Mama, Lupa, Victoria, and the answer to my prayers. A living, breathing package.
They stepped out of the tunnel, one after the other, looking weary-eyed and heavy, their bodies weighed down by eight hours of jet stream and months of sharing the same small space. Aunt Lupa held the baby to her chest, shielding his eyes from the bright lights. Mama smiled and pulled on my face. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen her smile and touch me like that. Victoria’s eyes were swollen, and she looked sleepy and startled at the same time. She gave me a quick hug, then barely looked at me.
I pushed past Uncle Vince and tugged on Lupa’s arms so that she’d release her grip some. I think I may have held my breath. But the moment I laid eyes on him, my new brother, I felt betrayed. I had envisioned a replica of Benito, and until that moment, hadn’t been fully aware of the impossible expectations I’d set up in my head. He had the same sad mouth and wary eyes, like Mama’s, but his skin was lighter than Benito’s. I could tell even then that his nose was too straight, nothing at all like Benito’s. My face grew hot with shame, but no one seemed to notice. They were already clutching shoulder bags and pushing their way toward the stream of concourse traffic. They didn’t want to be singled out and delayed at customs. They wanted a fresh start. They were eager to show Nicholas his new home.
So I followed, the proud big brother trailing behind, listening to the clicks of their heels. Nicholas began to cry, and Aunt Lupa pulled a bottle from a zippered pocket in her flight bag and fed him as she walked. I’d never seen a baby sucking so ravenously. A few gates down, as she was about to shift him to her shoulder for a burp, Aunt Lupa glanced back at me, to check whether I was still behind them, it seemed. But there was something else I read in that look. An iron sternness. A resolute calm that made me feel small. She wanted to make it clear that things would be different now, that this baby would be in able hands.
5
For weeks Santo did his own birdwalking—down Grand past Ashland up Hubbard—slowing down near a dirt lot across from 1515 West where he hoped to catch a glimpse of the stroller. There were twenty-seven Paolones in the phone book but only two within walking distance, and he was able to rule out the other almost immediately—an old man with two poodles and a German shepherd. The dirt lot was a twenty-minute walk from Mio Fratello, so he brought along a Clincher softball to bounce on the sidewalk along the way. At the lot he hoped to find a pickup game so he could mill around and watch the house at the same time. Twice he saw a few kids playing 500 with a dusty softball, but otherwise the field remained deserted.
He’d been tempted to ask Eddie Milano to ask his cop cousin about the Paolone house on Hubbard, but he was never sure when to trust Eddie, who had a complex code of loyalty that Santo could never understand. Sometimes an offhand comment by Pooch about Eddie’s mother would turn him cold. A few minutes later, Eddie would be cursing his mom himself.
The house on Hubbard had a picture window with avocado-green curtains roped off toward the middle with thick braided cords. From across the street Santo could see the table lamp that filled the small space behind the window, its watery pink porcelain base with glass chandelier knives encircling the bulb. He couldn’t see the table, but he imagined a mahogany tabletop with precise beveled edges and a lace doily tucked beneath the lamp. Atop the front entrance of the house hung a new awning, a yellow-lime piece of ridged plastic that made the house an eyesore amid all the other weather-beaten bungalows. He wondered whether his father’s and uncle’s $10,000 helped pay for the lamp and awning.
Santo had abandoned the idea of being big brother to this baby. What could he possibly say to the boy when the questions began? Santo would be content to meet the boy and whisper a few words to him, transmit the entire Peccatori history with the gravity of his voice and the lightness of his touch. He might simply tell the boy that Benito would watch over him. Santo needed to tell him that much. He needed to believe that Benito’s brief stay on this planet had served some purpose.
One Wednesday morning in late October he finally saw someone emerge from the side entrance. An old woman wearing a gray fall jacket and a silky babushka. She rushed down the sidewalk with her head down, a cloth grocery bag hanging from the crook of her arm. He followed her for a few blocks, trying to imagine her poking a finger into his father’s chest, but he couldn’t be sure.
The next day he saw the girl. He hadn’t really looked at her that night at the feast, but he remembered her deliberate stride, the way she gripped the handle on the buggy. She bent over the buggy and bundled up the baby inside, then wrapped a tan scarf around her head. She walked briskly, glancing down at the infant, oblivious to everything else.
Santo followed on the other side of the street, allowing himself to get within a few hundred feet. He’d settle for a glimpse now. He would cross the street and lengthen his stride, and as he came up on her, there would be a brief exchange of smiles, a few words, two people on the street admiring a baby, and ultimately she would feel compelled to slow down and show him and maybe even let Santo hold the baby. And that would be the end of it. One day he’d tell Uncle Vince about the exchange, provide just enough details to hook him, and before long Vince would tell Santo the story of the $10,000, how Vince had been forced to do business with the crooks at the bank.
Just a glimpse, he had to keep telling himself. Otherwise, he would have turned back. He crossed over finally and moved nearer, and when he got to within a few feet he felt emboldened by the sweet scent of baby oils. Benito’s scent rising from this other infant. His tiny half brother. For a moment he imagined that Benito himself lay in the cradle of the buggy, that his death had been all a mistake.
The girl slowed and finally stopped to speak to the baby. Santo could have passed her had he kept moving, but he stopped and tried to peer around the girl’s long wool coat, hoping not to startle her.
She turned and spotted him. Two sidewalk squares behind her, he remained frozen, not a single graceful escape open to him. He glanced at the flats of her shoes and scratched his head, no words coming to him. He thought he might turn and run.
“I didn’t mean to—” he said. “I thought you were someone.”
She nodded, showed a trace of a wary smile, and walked away.
Wait, he wanted to scream. I’m not what you think. But she kept walking, faster than before, glancing over her shoulder. She had no way of knowing that the three of them were bound together in some odd familial way. Wait, wait. Your baby is my brother. And what did that make her, this woman child with the ample cheeks and fair skin?
Just a glimpse. And then she could think what she wanted. She could tell her family about the pervert she met just outside her house. She could tell them he chased her, any damn thing she pleased, as long as she allowed a brief glance and didn’t holler for the police. He’d been thinking about this moment for so long, confiding in no one, playing out what he’d say to this child, and now it was falling apart. He’d never factored in the girl, never pictured her. His dream image contained only himself and this child, two Peccatoris huddled together against the outstretched fingers of the world.
He began to follow her again, hoping she’d turn onto Ashland and slip into a storefront where he could bump into her again, and they’d laugh about the awkwardness on the sidewalk. She did turn, and he lost sight of her for a whi
le, and when he got to Ashland she was gone. There was an apartment, the gangway to the apartment, a shoe repair, and a currency exchange all near the corner. He peered into each of these places as he passed, but there was no trace of her. He made his way back to the corner, and when he reached the apartment, he saw her emerge from the gangway. Her shoulders slumped when she saw him.
She stopped and glared at him, her grip tight on the handle of the buggy. Santo looked toward the baby. “I’ll scream,” she said.
“No no no, do I look…no.” He sounded like Anthony or Freddy with their high-pitched squeals. “I’m not that or anything like that. Oh, brother. My name is Santo and—”
And what? I want to hold your baby?
She angled the buggy toward the corner as if she were bracing herself to run, but she didn’t move.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. Really, I didn’t.”
“What do you want?” Her voice was scratchy and hoarse.
“I just wanted to apologize for startling you before. I didn’t want you to think…”
“I won’t. I won’t think. And now I have to go.”
She waited. She wanted his assent, his assurance that he wouldn’t follow her. She rocked on the balls of her feet, readjusted her grip on the handle of the buggy. Just a nod from him and she’d be gone. In a moment he’d never see her again.
“Let me ask you one question.”
She shifted her weight and stared at the sidewalk. She would let him ask his question.
“Do you know Agostino Peccatori?”
She looked at him then, studied his face, disbelief giving way to worry.
“I’m his son.”
She turned away from him and covered her mouth with trembling fingers. Santo could see what had drawn his father to this woman. The pear-shaped face, a soft rustic look to it, the kind of placid face that filled old photo albums. The long dark lashes that might have ordinarily disguised her worry and offered refuge, but not here. Her gaze shifted slowly, never landing upon anything higher than the sidewalk. There was no darting about the eyes typical of the girls Santo knew.
Santo inched a step closer. “I’m his son,” he said again.
She drew in a deep breath to settle herself. There was something crooked now in her expression, a tilted mouth, a narrowing of one eye.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I just wanted to meet you.”
They stood there for a while in silence. Light traffic streamed by on Ashland. He’d give her time to take in what he’d told her.
“Four months ago…my baby brother, Benito…he passed on.”
She clutched the frayed end of her scarf. “My God,” she said. “I can’t imagine—” She began to reach out, as if to touch his arm, but held back.
Santo hadn’t muttered his brother’s name aloud since his death and felt his throat constrict and a hammering in his chest. But talking about Benito made his brother’s death seem ordinary, too, another physical event, Santo’s thin voice unable to match the resonance of his thoughts. “He was almost two, always smiling. He’d go to anyone. He had these short, chubby legs.” He let himself picture Benito clomping around the apartment, barely sidestepping chairs and other obstacles in his path. “When you picked him up he never tried to wiggle out of your arms. Not that anyone could hold him for long, the big—”
He didn’t care anymore whether she was listening. He was talking now for himself. And he couldn’t stop. He told her about the last night and the funeral, how the whole neighborhood filled Mio Fratello. All the while the girl rocked her baby, pushing and pulling the buggy in short tugs.
“I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this,” he told her, hoping that the child in the buggy was taking in his voice, the only Peccatori voice he would ever hear. “I’m not sure…”
But he was sure. Uncle Vince always complained there was no history in America. But he was wrong. This was Santo’s history. Right here on the sidewalk. And he wouldn’t let that pass. He told her about his other brothers and sister, wanting her to assemble the pieces into a brilliant kaleidoscope, to discover how all their lives intersected. She couldn’t fully understand her baby’s place in the world otherwise. This child had to know his past.
“Thanks for not running away,” he said. His eyes followed the path of a trolley bus heading southbound. “I didn’t mean to, you know…”
She turned to him. “What has your father told you?” Her eyes had softened, but the muscles around her jaw remained rigid. Santo had seen the same defiance in his sister.
“My father didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then how—”
“I don’t even know your name.” Only Paolone, he thought. “My father doesn’t know I’m here. He doesn’t know anything.”
Her eyes downcast, she muttered, “Ella…it’s short for Gabriella.” She looked at him again, her eyes brown pools, and Santo saw regret there. She walked around to the front of the buggy, reached inside, and pulled her baby to her chest. She turned the child around to face Santo. “This is Joseph,” she said.
“My God.” Santo sighed. He pushed his finger into the child’s tiny fist. “He’s beautiful. He looks just like you.” And nothing like a Peccatori. He tugged on the boy’s doughy arm and imagined he’d feel an onslaught of joy upon touching this child, but more than anything he felt bewilderment. Here was a brother of his who had none of Angela Rosa in him, who would never have a brother or sister of the same flesh.
“Can I hold him?”
She leaned into Santo and allowed the boy to slip from the cradle of her embrace into his waiting arms.
Santo let him settle there, whispering to him in Italian broken phrases from the few words he knew. Caro bambino. Giuseppe piccolo. Dio benedetto. The baby’s big eyes locked on Santo for a long while before he began searching for his mother.
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-four weeks.”
Santo quickly calculated. Joseph had been only a week or two old at the feast. His father may have first learned of the baby that very night. And this Ella. She had to chase down her mother to stop her from strangling Agostino. But why then? Why that night? Ella must have just told her. Santo imagined the exchange between them, her mother’s persistence. Who is this strange man? her mother probably screamed. The baby needs a father, for Christ’s sake. Her mother’s persistence had worn down her resolve, and after returning from the hospital, Ella must have caved in finally to unburden herself of her shame. Ella had been mistaken, though. Her mother would not sit quietly with this information. She would either destroy Agostino or use the information for her own gain. And Ella’s shame festered when she realized her mother’s intent.
All this occurred to Santo in a matter of an instant. And he could see in Ella’s eyes something passing there as well, a flash of insight maybe into who they were, Santo and Ella.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
His first impulse was to lie, to create an elaborate story about chance meetings and shared destinies.
“I saw the check,” he said, without thinking.
“The check?”
He searched her eyes for signs of coyness or teasing, and when he saw none he felt something drop in his chest. Santo knew then that Gabriella Paolone was her mother’s daughter. Whatever defiance she harbored never surfaced around the old woman. And this bastard child only enhanced her submission, gave Ella’s mother reason to tighten her steely, old-world grip. Look what happens to these girls in America.
Joseph began to grunt and squirm, and Santo was glad for the distraction. He held the child out toward his mother and wanted nothing more than to bolt back to Mio Fratello, where Uncle Vince would be hobbling around the bar, cussing every technological breakthrough of the twentieth century. At times like this, Santo took great comfort in his uncle’s slant on the world.
“You said you saw the check. What check?”
“I don’t know anything about the check,” he said.
&
nbsp; She placed Joseph in the buggy, as if to shield him from whatever was about to erupt in her. She turned to Santo.
“Tell me about the check, Santoro.”
“Santo.”
She shot him an impatient look, and Santo cowered. He tucked his hands in his back pockets and hoped she’d take pity on his sorry self.
“I really don’t know anything about the check,” he said.
But after what his father had done, he felt he had no other choice. A simple bank draft wasn’t going to erase all obligation to this girl. He owed her an answer. He told her about the receipt he’d found one night among Vince’s papers. He told her the name on the check. And the amount stamped on the pink sheet. He hoped that would be enough. He didn’t want to tell her he’d seen her before, that smoky June night almost dreamlike in his memory now, those images rising up before him when he prayed from his pew on Sundays.
She began to sob, tranquil sobs that sealed her off from him. Some time between the moment Joseph was discovered and the moment Agostino was identified as the father, Ella had become a commodity in her mother’s eyes. No reassurances from Santo were going to soften that.
“I have to leave,” she said. Her voice was thick with tears.
Santo nodded and retreated a step. He peered into the buggy for one last look. “Can I walk with you?”
“No, I better go.”