by Jim Fusilli
“Why should we quit?” said the guy in the passenger seat.
“Because it’s Bebe’s group,” Terrasini said. “Or ain’t you noticed?”
The two guys scoffed. But soon there was silence in the car.
For the next few weeks, it got worse for Bebe, the two guys busting his balls relentless and Bebe, no threat, had to take it. They flushed his cufflinks down the toilet, hid his slacks, soiled his shoes. They told Terrasini to drive off and leave him behind, which he would not do. In rehearsal, they altered the harmony on “Shine On, Harvest Moon” or “I Found a Million Dollar Baby (In a Five-and-Ten Cent Store),” leaving Bebe confused, struggling to find his note as they fell to laughter.
Bebe kept his mouth shut and suffered their bullshit. Terrasini waited—sooner or later, Bebe’s going to tell Hennie and she’ll go to Mimmo, right? But Bebe said nothing and then one day the two sons of bitches tore his favorite jacket up the back, laughing when Bebe tried to put it on, the thing coming apart. Feeling like he could burst into tears, Bebe ran out of the room. Terrasini grabbed one guy by the lapels, his fist cocked and quivering. “The next guy who lays a hand on him deals with me,” he said as he threw the guy down. “And I hope to hell it’s soon.”
The one problem with Bebe, if you could call it a problem, was the girls. They took notice, this kid with his picture in the papers, and when they came to the show, they saw he had these sparkling blue eyes. They wanted to take the gawky kid in their arms and hold him and kiss his cheek, run their fingers through his hair, purr at him. They waited at the stage door. They were kids like him and they didn’t think anything of standing out there in the rain, the snow, the summer heat. They didn’t think it was unseemly. They were bubbly inside. “Billy!” they’d squeal. “Billy!” And Bebe dove in.
And in no time he figured out their innocent passion was a thing he could use. He’d look at the crowd of hopping girls, bouncing on their toes, clapping their hands, and he’d pick one. Maybe she wasn’t 14 or 15 years old. She’s 16 and, though she’s still got one foot back in childhood, she’s ready. Soon she’s in the backseat with Bebe, who’s telling her he spotted her from the stage, that she’s got a special something—he had an instinct for what the girl prized in her appearance: her eyes, nose, lips, hair, figure, legs. But he understood that part of his charm was she wanted to mother him. So he went in pure. It’s all sweetness in the backseat, tender whispers. He hesitates but takes her hand and soon they kiss and kiss again. He runs his thumb along her neck; his hand falls to her thigh. She had no intention, not really, but now she’s alive with electricity. Nothing like this has ever happened before. She is melting. She moans. Bebe tells her, “I knew it would be someone like you,” and soon her skirt is up, her panties down and Bebe’s in.
This happened two or three times a week, and pretty soon Bebe’s got a bounce in his step and he don’t give a shit what the other two singers in the Hudson Four think. In the world he’s living in, nobody can touch him. The music and the girls put him in a golden place. His needs are fulfilled.
CHAPTER TWO
There came a point when Sal Benno saw this school thing wasn’t going to work out too good. The proof: No matter how hard he pushed his face into the books, nothing stuck. Meanwhile, Leo Bell sat in the classroom and everything the teachers said he understood and pretty soon he knew more than they did. Whenever a teacher asked a question and nobody stuck up their hand, she went, “Leonardo…” and Leo stood and gently explained it to the rest of the class in such a way that nobody was angry with him, nobody was jealous, but nobody wanted to be his friend neither, he’s like another adult hanging around.
Bell tipped Benno on where to find the answers for their homework, which accounted for his decent grades. “This could be cheating,” Bell said as they studied side by side in the back of Benno’s Salumeria, their books on the butcher block.
“Let’s say no,” Benno replied. As a hedge, Benno confessed each week to Father Gregory, who threw him a few extra Hail Marys to make him feel better. The portly priest had a pretty good idea the boy was going to end up behind the counter at his uncle’s store, so if he could add and subtract he’d be fine. Salvatore Benno wasn’t the type to put his thumb on the scale to harm the neighbors. He was loyal, firm in his opinions—the kind of kid who stuck up for the weakest in the schoolyard. When Father Gregory came by Benno’s to pick up the package they put together for him and the nuns, he made sure to tell them Sal was a good boy; tell his mother, Giovanna, not to worry.
But Vito Benno was concerned. Sal was kind and happy, and it was better all of a sudden when he came around, as different in the room as when somebody lights a candle at night. But he could not forget the incident with Maguire and the gun and how his nephew was willing to come to his aid regardless of consequences. He knew there were forces in the neighborhood that could take advantage of that kind of loyalty. Vito Benno saw the kids at the candy store looking at Mimmo in his smoky sunglasses, bossing a crew; watching as Frankie Fortune rolled up in a shiny new car, the suits he wore, the way he don’t give a shit. He heard the way the kids whispered the names Farcolini, Corini, Gigenti—men who were legends, Sicilians who took shit from nobody, the cops didn’t push them around. They liked that, the kids. They saw their fathers working endless hours for next to nothing; they lived in a box, three to a bed, the pipes dripped, there’s rats. What are they going to think? What choice would they make?
So Vito prayed the boy stayed good, trying to think of a way to protect him. He owed it to his sister. Once Giovanna had her own glow. She was sweet and fragile, but gullible, and now she was broken by what happened: the man she thought was her future husband taking off like a thief in the night. Now she worked a sewing machine up in Union, looking old before her time, and everybody in the neighborhood shook their heads in sadness, remembering when she was young and full of hope.
One rainy Saturday afternoon, Benno and Bell were sitting in the back of the store, sharing a chicken Aunt Gemma had fried in olive oil, adding red pepper flakes and fresh lemon juice. They were eating off wax paper, two kids deep in the unspoken warmth of friendship. Bell was looking for a napkin, the grease from the chicken coating his fingers, and Benno offered him the hem of his apron. Their bellies full from the chicken, fried potatoes and escarole, Benno went out to the store to get a paper bag for the legs, a meal in themselves for Bell and his father. Bell swept the breadcrumbs off the butcher block into his palm and went looking for the trash. When he looked up, he saw Enzo Paolo approaching Vito and Gemma. The cop had his five-corner hat in his hands, rainwater dripping from the brim.
Bell heard Gemma scream. Then a plate crashed to the floor.
Bell darted from the back room.
On the floor, a shattered jug. Olives rolled across the sawdust.
Gemma wailed. Hurrying, Vito led her to a stack of boxes so she could sit. Dark-skinned widows who had been shopping, dressed in black as if the tragedy were preordained, rushed around her, ancient brows furrowed in concern.
When Bell arrived, he saw Benno’s face had gone blank except for a trembling at the lips and the corner of his eyes.
“My mother’s…” Benno said in Sicilian, his voice hollow. “My mother. They found her…She’s dead.”
“Sal,” Bell said. “I’m—Ah, Sal.” He took his friend by the arms, holding him as if he feared he would fall.
“My mother…” Benno muttered again.
Gemma howled again, her scream an unearthly siren. She beat her fist against her chest.
“I didn’t do nothing for her,” Benno said as he shook his head. “Nothing.”
The widows were crying as well, twining their rosary beads around knobby fingers. They knew Giovanna Benno as a girl, slight, pretty, who’d blossomed nice. They remembered when her long black hair shone in the sun; she used to brush it 100 times a day, Gemma once reported. Giovanna walked on her toes, happy until that charmer Zitani did her awful.
Father Gregory burst th
rough the doorway, his robe damp with mist. “Vito, il mio Dio. Ciò è impossibile.”
Vito pointed him toward his nephew.
“Salvatore.” The priest was sweating, his round face knit with panic. In the confessional, he had learned from the boy that he’d pointed a gun at Maguire the cop. Now this—the kind of blow that can confuse a child, maybe even drive him away from the church before he had the means to confront a crisis of faith. Father Gregory draped his arm over the boy’s shoulder and looked hard into his eyes.
“Salvatore…”
“I’m all right, Father,” Benno said plainly.
Bell interrupted. “Sally, don’t,” he said. “Nobody here wants a hero.”
Benno slumped. “Because of me, she had no chance. None.”
“Sal, no,” the priest moaned. “No. The opposite is true. If not for you…”
“She loved you, your mother,” added Bell, who’d always thought of Giovanna Benno as a living ghost.
The priest rubbed Benno’s back. “Leo’s right. Your mother loved you. You can’t doubt this.”
Benno began to nod slowly. Finally, a tear fell to the floor.
Seeing Benno like that, Bell fought back tears of his own. It’s true his friend’s mother had been a sorry thing who could barely raise a smile, her pride stolen. But for more than a decade Sal had heard her voice, felt her touch. He had memories.
“Sal, maybe you go over to your aunt,” Father Gregory suggested.
Bell looked across the room. The crying women surrounded Gemma, who pressed her handkerchief against her eyes. Meanwhile, Antonio the Barber was talking to Vito. Other shop owners and neighbors were gathering outside.
Soon Sal was holding his aunt, who let out another cry as she accepted his embrace. Bell watched as the women closed around them, reaching to stroke Sal, their happy neighborhood boy.
The barber trailing, Vito Benno came over. The priest shook his hand and offered his condolences.
“You heard what Enzo said?” Vito asked in Sicilian.
The priest told him no.
“She fell under the trolley. The wheels…”
Bell saw his friend’s uncle give the priest a knowing glance.
“She fell,” Vito Benno repeated. “Slipped and fell.”
Bell heard himself say, “It’s raining.”
“Yes,” Father Gregory said. “The tracks were wet.” He shook the shop owner’s hand again. “Come to the rectory to arrange the service.”
Vito Benno said he would.
Antonio the Barber pulled out a bottle of bootleg rye he’d bought from Mimmo’s boys, Narrows Gate awash with illegal liquor. He poured four glasses, handing one to the man who lost his sister to despair, another to the priest and one to Bell, composed, stalwart, no longer a boy.
“A Giovanna,” the barber said as he raised a glass.
Bell said, “A Giovanna.”
The glasses clinked.
Bell brought Sal home for the night. Though the elder Bell had purchased the brownstone on Third Street and had two tenants, he and his son lived a humble existence in meager rooms that lacked a woman’s eye for what a home needed.
Still stunned and confused, Benno was struck by the weighty silence in the apartment. He could’ve used some noise to block his thoughts. Every week there were funerals at St. Francis. You heard the bells in the classroom, you could smell the incense, then here comes the casket. People died: old, young, sick, accidents, killed tripping and falling under trolley wheels. It happens. You shrugged when you heard that the crew chained up a guy and threw him off a bridge, blew another guy’s brains out the top of his head. After a while, you thought it’s nothing, somebody dying. But it ain’t nothing.
“Salvatore,” said Mr. Bell. “Come. Sit.” He was small man, bald right down the center of his head, a little belly, always wearing a vest that matched his slacks, a watch on a gold chain. He was older than the other parents at St. Francis, maybe past 50. Giovanna Benno had been 28.
Benno hopped into the chair and settled next to Mr. Bell. Benno expected he would say something poem-like with “thou arts” and “knowests” about dying, going to heaven, Jesus is standing there, his arms open, understanding on his bearded, Sicilian-looking face. Already, Benno took some comfort in that, maybe his mother found a little bit of peace.
“This is a raw deal you got,” Mr. Bell explained.
“I know. But it’s OK.”
“No, OK it’s not. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”
Bell watched from the doorway as his father dropped his hand on Benno’s shoulder. “A raw deal,” Mr. Bell repeated. “I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing your mother, but I am told she was a good woman. She loved you.”
Benno shrugged.
“No? So you’re thinking you can be safe from sadness by fooling yourself?”
“No,” Benno said in mild protest. But he was thinking, Mr. Bell can read minds?
“Your mother is with you always. This you must never forget. And always you must make her proud.” Mr. Bell rose. “You and Leo, you share this situation now,” he said. “Neither mother is here. So you help each other in this objective—to make your mothers proud. All right?” Mr. Bell offered Benno his right hand as if to seal an agreement.
Benno shook it. “Sure,” he said. “All right, Mr. Bell. You got it.”
Later, while Leo slept next to him, Benno stared at the ceiling with an arm and a leg hanging off the single bed, Mr. Bell snoring down the hall. He thought about the day, his aunt wailing, the olives in the sawdust, Father Gregory, Mr. Bell telling him his mother is with him always.
But what was she wearing this morning when she left the house? What’s the last thing she said to him? What did he say to her? Benno couldn’t remember. In his mind, last week was this morning; this morning was three months ago. There was his mother on Christmas day or watching him diving off a pier into the Hudson, a wan smile on her face for a fleeting moment. He could see her hands, thin, her fingers rubbed raw from work. Then it all disappeared.
Jesus, thought Sal Benno, I’m an orphan.
Nobody in Narrows Gate who knew Bebe personally would admit it, but in November 1935, the whole town was sitting around the radio when the Hudson Four got their shot on Captain Bridges’ Amateur Hour, which was sent across the country via the CBS Network. Hennie hustled and noodged to get the quartet on the program, knowing they’d reach more people in one night than if they played a thousand nightclubs. Finally, Bridges relented and gave them an audition, which they nailed, Bebe singing lead on their jazzy barbershop version of “Shine.” Afterward, Hennie snuggled up to Bridges and said, “Now, Captain, you’re not going to hit the gong while my son is singing.” From behind his desk, Bridges smiled wicked, raising a fat cigar to his lips. Hennie went back to Narrows Gate wondering whether she had finally come up against somebody she couldn’t outsmart. Bridges had America’s number-one radio program and he didn’t get there by luck. Maybe he was setting Bebe up. Maybe he had a hard-on for small-town Sicilians. Already he butchered the name Rosiglino when he tried to pronounce it. As she counted down the days to the appearance, she saw the Captain with a charcoal heart, as a Southern sadist. She was wondering if it was time to see Mimmo, maybe he makes a cornice fall off a building when Bridges takes a walk on Fifth Avenue, it just misses, maybe it squashes his dog and he learns quick.
Usually when she went to a show by the Hudson Four, Hennie rode in the backseat with her son, with Nino Terrasini driving. But on the afternoon prior to the Bridges broadcast, she hired a car just for her and Bebe. A big black Ford pulled up in front of the house and the neighborhood came out, the Irish in knots over whether to snub Bebe or claim him as an adopted son. Hennie and Bebe descended into the fading November eve like it was prom night, Bebe in a white dinner jacket, a red boutonnière in the lapel, razor crease in his slacks; Hennie wore a fox stole and waved like a queen, savoring the moment. Revenge was some sweet nectar, huh?
“Bebe, listen
to me,” Hennie said as the car eased from the hydrant.
Like I haven’t been, Bebe thought.
“This is your shot. You hear me? Your shot.”
Bebe was holding a circular makeup mirror, studying his teeth. Grooming mattered, even on radio. Look sharp, feel sharp.
“He asks about the Hudson Four, you answer. You.”
He snapped the mirror shut.
“You say your name. Say ‘Billy,’ not ‘Bill.’ You’re a kid.”
Bebe bristled when he was reminded he was the youngest of the Hudson Four. But not now. He saw her point. Youth was an advantage. He was the innocent newcomer, the boy on the way up. So far, they were on the same beam.
“When you’re singing ‘Shine,’ you step out. Make little asides. You know, when all of you sing ‘Cause my hair is curly,’ sing something before the next verse.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know what. Think of something. What would Crosby do?”
“He’d go ‘bub-bub boo-boo.’”
“Then go ‘bub-bub boo-boo.’”
Actually, in the version he cut with the Mills Brothers, Crosby commented on what the guy sang, adding a bit to the lyric: “Yeah, that’s some bush on his head,” and the like. The Hudson Four tried it in rehearsal and the other two singers hated it, mostly because it put Bebe out front even further.
The big Ford approached the gaping mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel and then they were on the Manhattan side, buildings piercing the clouds, and heading crosstown for the Loew’s where Captain Bridges broadcast before an audience. Hennie was thinking the crowd ought to be satisfied they got a free ticket to see a big-time show, but no. They had to groan and boo, egging on the Captain to pick up his mallet, slam the golden gong and get some zoticone booted off the air, a career over before it began.
“What are you going to do if he gongs you?” Hennie asked as the car navigated toward 42nd Street and Times Square.