Dinner at Fiorello’s

by Rick R. Reed

  He turned back to her. “You like what you do?”

  “What? Picking up after you guys?” Maxine snorted. “Yeah, it’s just what I always dreamed of. Scrubbin’ toilets, dustin’, running the sweeper, cookin’ for people who don’t look twice at what I make. It’s a dream come true, honey.” Maxine rolled her eyes.

  Henry sat back down at the table. “So you’re not happy here?”

  Maxine grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I was just bein’ sarcastic. You know me.” She shrugged. “When I was a little girl, I thought I might be a nurse. But then my teen years came, and with them the boys and the partyin’. I never got the grades I needed to get into nursing school. My own fault.” She took a sip of tea. In her eye there was a faraway look. “My folks wouldn’t have had the money anyway, even if I did have the grades.

  “So yeah, I like it here. I wouldn’t have been here so long if I didn’t. Believe it or not, there are quite a few jobs out there for those of us who don’t wanna be rich and don’t mind workin’ long hours.” She laughed, but there was little mirth in it. She leaned forward and briefly laid her hand on Henry’s cheek. “I’ve come to care a lot about you guys, especially you. You’re kind of like my own family.”

  They sat for a while in silence. Henry realized—and he was ashamed of this—that he really didn’t know much about what happened with Maxine when she left them and went home every night. He knew she was married and had a little girl, but if he had to come up with their names, he’d be hard pressed.

  Maxine put her feet on the floor and leaned forward. “I gotta be getting on my way pretty soon.” As though she had read his mind, she said, “My hubby’s got a softball game tonight, and then we’re goin’ out for pizza.”

  “Sounds fun,” Henry said. He wanted to ask Maxine more about her life—and he would make a point to later—but before she headed out for the evening, he really wanted her counsel. In spite of being the least-educated person in the house, she was the one Henry trusted most for her common-sense advice.

  “You know that job I told you about at Fiorello’s?”

  Maxine nodded.

  “Well, I can have it if I want it.” Because he knew she would ask, Henry hurried to explain what the position entailed and that this was not a summer job. He’d be learning the restaurant business from the ground up. He thought it was a great opportunity for some practical experience, which he could augment perhaps later with culinary school.

  “So, wait a minute.” Maxine scratched her head. “This means you won’t be going to NYU this fall? Henry, are you sure that’s wise?”

  At her question, Henry felt his first twinge of uncertainty since Rosalie Fiorello had said he could have the job if he wanted it. But really? Throw away his education at a very prestigious school to bus tables? For not the first time that day, Henry wondered about the import of what he was considering. Was this a smart move?

  “No!” Henry laughed, and there was a touch of hysteria in it. “I’m not sure at all.”

  Like Rosalie Fiorello, Maxine urged him to think more about things. “I have a kid brother Paul—he’s the smart one in the family. He went to school—got good enough grades to get a full ride. Nothing fancy like NYU, just Illinois State in Normal, but he did real well. Majored in education and history, and now he’s teaching at a high school out in Des Plaines. He loves it. And those kids love him.” Maxine leaned closer to Henry. “I went to visit him down there in Normal one weekend. I think it was siblings weekend. Ah, it was fun. We had a blast. Anyway, my point is, although I was glad to spend time with the baby brother, I was sad too. Do you know why?”

  Henry was pretty sure he did, but he shook his head.

  “Because I realized how much I missed out on. I wasn’t much older than most of the kids on campus, but I felt a lot older. I already had a kid! And my options seemed a lot more limited than Paul’s.” Maxine looked away for a moment, and her eyes glistened. Henry wondered if she was as content working as their housekeeper as she let on. When she looked back at him, though, she was smiling, even though the smile was a bit forced. Even Henry could tell that. “Paul told me, one time after he graduated, that his college years were some of his happiest. He said he had so much freedom and really, so little responsibility. Sure, he had classes and tests and stuff, but that was nothin’ compared to real life.”

  Henry nodded. He’d thought speaking with Maxine would clear his head. She’d show him there was nothing wrong with being a simple working person, and that a college education was no guarantee of happiness.

  But she had done the opposite. She said things along the lines of what he would have expected from his parents.

  They didn’t talk any more about the prospect of his working at Fiorello’s as Maxine gathered her stuff up to head home. And that was good, because Henry didn’t really know what there was to say.

  He was confused, but he knew he wanted the job. He also knew he wasn’t sure about giving up NYU.

  And he knew he couldn’t think about it anymore.

  He could decide what to do in the morning. He was worn out—the day had taken too much out of him, even if he was only eighteen and supposed to be blessed with boundless energy.

  He pulled the cold salmon with sour cream and chives Maxine had made for dinner and ate it while standing over the sink. The house was quiet. His dad wouldn’t come home until seven thirty or eight o’clock, and who knew where his mother was?

  By eight, bored with TV and Facebook, Henry headed up to his room. As he was getting undressed, flinging his clothes to the floor, he heard the sound of an engine in the driveway below him.

  In his briefs, he crept to the window and looked down to see his mom parked in the circular driveway. He stood still and watched her through the driver’s side window. She stayed in the car for a long time, obviously unaware she was being observed. It finally dawned on Henry that she was talking on her cell to someone. He watched and realized he had never seen his mother so animated. No, she wasn’t angry. She seemed… happy. She threw back her head and laughed in a way Henry had rarely seen. There was something of the young girl in her demeanor.

  It made Henry feel embarrassed, as if he were intruding on a private moment. He went back to his bed and lay down. He grabbed his iPad off the nightstand, with intentions of reading or maybe watching a movie, but he never opened its cover.

  With the device on his chest, Henry drifted off to sleep. Just before slumber’s final curtain, he realized something—he was certain his mother was not talking on her phone to his father.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  VITO CARELLI double-checked the lock on the back entrance of Fiorello’s and set off. He was bone weary but felt the contentment of knowing he had worked hard and had fed people all day and evening long. The pleasure he knew they took in his simple Sicilian food was a comfort. Occasionally, he would peek out from the kitchen and watch their expressions when they took a bite of something he’d made. If it was the first bite, especially, Vito found a sense of joy and delight in their expression. It was something he called, in Italian, the look. That expression of pure satisfaction. Sometimes they closed their eyes, almost in rapture. The look made it all worthwhile.

  But now his shift was over, and Vito was feeling empty as he walked the streets of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. The night had turned chillier with a breeze off the lake. Vito felt removed from the rest of the world, even though there were lots of people out, riding in cars, walking the streets, in ‘L’ cars overhead. Work was his lifeline, his sanctuary, even though he was mostly silent with his coworkers. They were all nice enough people, but Vito wasn’t much of a talker. His mama and pop had taught him that big boys don’t cry and real men never complain. They shoulder their burdens with dignity and keep them locked away in their hearts, however broken that particular organ was.

  At last, after walking several blocks south on Greenview, he turned the corner on Morse and headed west. He could have taken the ‘L�
�� home, but he liked these walks. Not only did they save him money, but they also helped clear his head. As he made his way home, he could feel some of the tension in his shoulders, born of standing over a hot Wolf stove all day, melt away.

  He wished he could say the same for the tension he felt inside. That, he feared, might never go away. Not when he considered all he had lost.

  He came to the door that led to a set of stairs that would take him to his big two-bedroom, above a dollar store at street level. He unlocked it with his key and trudged up the stairs. Vito was a big man, and his tread was heavy. Every night, it alerted his girls, Gabriella and Concetina, Gabby and Connie for short, that he was home. Vito permitted himself a smile as he heard them send up a chorus of barks and whining. Connie would always scratch at the door when she realized her master was making his homecoming, and Vito knew if he ever moved, he’d need to paint that door before taking his leave.

  It was nice to know that someone was happy to see him, someone wanted to welcome him home. Even if they were just two mutts, hungry for their suppers.

  Vito sighed. He hated leaving the girls cooped up in the little apartment all day, even if Victor, the old man living next to him, took them out for walks a couple of times a day. They were big girls, German shepherd and pit bull mixes, and Vito often wished he could give them more room to frolic and roam.

  He tried to make up for it by showering them with love and affection. And he spoiled them! They slept on the bed with him, and every night he brought home food from the restaurant for them. It was usually scraps and leftovers, things that would have been thrown away anyway, but what dog would complain about a veal cutlet, a bit of roast chicken, say, or a nice piece of flank steak?

  Vito pressed his key into the lock and, as usual, had to jam his shoulder hard against the door to open it, since the girls were frantically pushing on it, jumping in their excitement to see him.

  Finally he got the door open and slipped quickly inside. He fell to his knees before the dogs, hugging them and allowing them to lick his face all over. The welcome never failed to make him laugh. The girls were so excited they were whimpering.

  But the welcome also saddened him, because it always brought about the memory, not so long ago, when he was greeted at the door with human kisses, human touches, excitement, and love.

  He couldn’t allow himself to think about that. Think about that, and he might just be tempted to go throw himself in bed and pull the covers over his head. He might stave off the night licking his wounds and wallowing in sorrow. He kissed each dog’s forehead and clumsily got to his feet.

  He smiled down at the girls and said, “You ready to go outside? And then we have our supper, no?”

  He was sure the dogs understood every word. To prove his point, they both moved over to the area opposite from the door, where their leashes and harnesses hung from hooks on the wall. Vito took them down and suited Gabby and Connie up.

  They tugged at his hand, eager to get outside, to do their business and see what new smells awaited them. He remembered a certain little dark-haired boy saying they were reading their “pee-mail” and shut the memory quickly from his mind.

  Outside, the girls led him straightaway to the spot near a streetlight where they often peed. Both squatted, and Vito indulged them by saying, as he always did, “Brave raggaze,” or “good girls.”

  They trotted on, stopping here and there to sniff. Tonight he had brought home some ground veal, left over from that day’s special—meatball subs. He couldn’t wait to watch the girls enjoy the meat, although it would be gone so quickly, he would wonder, as he always did, if they even tasted it.

  Later, after the dogs had eaten their feast, everyone was in a mellow mood. Vito was curled up on the couch with the latest Lee Child thriller he was attempting to get through on his chest, and the dogs lay at his feet, Connie snoring loudly. “Sawing logs again,” he whispered. Sometimes the dog snored so loudly at night she woke him, but the evenness of her breathing, fortunately, almost always worked to lull him back to sleep.

  He couldn’t concentrate on the book. Times like these, he thought, shutting the book after dog-earing the page where he left off, were the hardest—when it was quiet, when his hands and mind were unoccupied. It was part of the reason he loved working in a busy kitchen. There was always something to do and scarcely a free moment to think. There was always another order. That busyness was a blessing.

  He told himself, as he had a thousand times before, he shouldn’t do it, but he got up carefully off the couch, placing his feet so he didn’t awaken his girls, and headed for the bedroom that wasn’t his. “Why do you do this to yourself?” he wondered aloud.

  He crept into the bedroom softly, almost as though he were afraid he might wake its occupant, but the moonlight streaming in through the single window bore witness to an empty room. The silver light showed, in a kind of black-and-white reality, a twin bed, neatly made up with a Sesame Street comforter. Atop the bed was a stuffed rabbit, one ear up, one down, its synthetic fur worn down in spots, demonstrating that it was much loved. Above the bed was a poster, a framed blowup of the cover from one of the Harry Potter books. Opposite the bed, a bookcase, filled partially with Golden books and paperbacks of Harry Potter. There was also a collection of all The Wizard of Oz books. Interspersed with the books were toys: a fire truck, a baseball and glove, a battered Candy Land board game, and more stuffed animals.

  Vito sat down on the bed, which creaked under his weight. He put his head in his hands and wept. The visitation to this room was one he tried to avoid, because this was always what happened when he broached the doorway. He lost control. He could never keep the tears at bay.

  He cried until his throat felt raw, sore, and his eyes burned. He lifted his head and tried unsuccessfully not to allow himself to remember sitting on this same bed, reading a chapter from one of the books in the room to a little boy with serious eyes, who would always urge him to read just a little more, just a little more, until Vito would tell him that enough was enough, kiss his forehead, and tuck him in tightly. “Buona notte e sogni d’oro,” Vito whispered every night after the kiss, and he would ruffle the little boy’s hair. Good night and golden dreams….

  Would Vito ever have them again?

  Wearily, he got up from the bed, feeling as though his very bones weighed more, such was the effort to drag them across the room.

  He paused in the doorway and thought, for the thousandth time, he should get rid of all the toys and kiddie books. He could donate them to a charity where some child could actually get some joy out of them, instead of having them lie fallow here, like museum pieces.

  He could turn the room into a study for himself, perhaps get a leather recliner and a reading lamp, a nice side table, and come in here and have a glass of wine or a grappa, read at night, instead of brooding over what could never be changed.

  He sighed and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  The girls lay on the couch, taking up the whole of it. Vito smiled at them, scratching at the scruff along his chin and jawline. Should he roust them to take them out for a final walk or leave them be?

  The answer lay in the total exhaustion Vito felt. They’ll be okay’til morning. Those dogs sleep like the dead.

  In his bedroom, with its king-size bed and colorful Picasso prints on the wall, Vito stripped down, tossing his clothes in the wicker hamper he kept in the closet. He sat down on the big bed naked, wondering if he should beat off, just for the release. But he was too tired. He didn’t need the help sleeping masturbation would afford. He lay down on his back, wondering if he should wake the girls, just to call them to join him on the bed.

  They would come into the bedroom eventually, when they realized they were alone in the living room, but Vito felt so small on the big mattress, as if he was not over six feet and more than two hundred pounds. Bed was such a lonely place.

  He continued to stare up at the ceiling until the shadows cast upon it became the si
lhouettes of two men, their bodies intertwined, moving apart only to come together again. Vito thought he had shed every tear possible in the other bedroom, but one or two leaked out of his eyes at the vision.

  He closed his eyes, told himself to sleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day, and Vito thanked God for that.

  There is a blond man standing in the distance on a beach. Waves lap at the shore, and sunlight makes the water sparkle. The man is kneeling at the feet of a little boy, who is turned away from Vito. The man is telling the boy something, but Vito cannot make out his words. The wind snatches them away before they reach Vito’s ears.

  The little boy turns around, and when he spies Vito across the span of hot sand, his eyes light up and he grins. He says a final word to the man kneeling next to him and then runs, filled with joy, toward Vito, his little feet beating hard into the wet sand near the shoreline.

  His small arms are outstretched, and there is happiness, pure and simple, spread across his slightly sunburned features. That happiness feels like a gift to Vito, consuming him and filling him up.

  Vito squats and stretches his arms out, anticipating the moment when the little boy will be in his arms, when he can lift him and swing him around, heading into the water with him.

  Vito awakened and looked around his darkened bedroom, feeling disappointed and disoriented. Alone. His heart was in his throat, and he was torn between two emotions, joy at having the privilege of seeing them both and despair at the knowledge that he never would again.

  The dogs, one at his feet and one lying curled up at his side, snored softly, unaware of Vito’s dreaming. He reached out for the closer one, wrapping his arms around her warm and furry neck and drawing her close.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HENRY AWAKENED to bright sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window. For a moment his thoughts were free from the turmoil and excitement of the day before and he lay in bed, not thinking, just enjoying the streams of light that came in in angular lines through the plantation shutters at his windows. He reveled in the feel of the warm linens beneath him.