“There’s a church,” Gus said, pointing beyond the windshield.
“That’s a post office,” Peter said, “and Rosamaria D’Agostino wouldn’t have married the Pope. Even back in second grade she wanted to grow up and become a saint. The rest of the kids talked about being cops or firemen or astronauts, but not Rosamaria D’Agostino. She even had picked out her own feast day.” He made a turn at 38th Street and tossed his cigarette out his window.
“Some children are blessed with ambition, Petie,” Lena said. “Others need a little time to grow, settle down, mature. You could take a page out of her book, you know.”
“But you always told me someday you wanted grandchildren.”
“You could make plans, Petie.”
“I know. Wake up, smell the coffee.”
“The early bird eats the worms.”
“Remember the Alamo. Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Peter turned, heading back toward Colley Avenue. “Benedicamus Domino.” Let us bless the Lord.
“You had such promise, Petie.” Lena snapped open her purse. She shook her head sadly. “Three merit badges short of being an Eagle Scout. Second soprano in the fifth-grade choir. Sergeant of the Saint Felicitas patrol boys. Captain altar boy. Then in high school you were president of the Camera Club. We were so proud. And all of your science projects, Petie. Remember how you used to cut up those ugly worms? We still keep your jars and ribbons in your old room.” Lena held a round mirror before her face as she spread on a fresh layer of lipstick. “Remember how proud we were when they printed the news in the parish bulletin? We thought maybe you’d get a college scholarship. We thought you’d find the cure to cancer. Work with test tubes and one of those fancy electronic microscopes, go to your job every day wearing a white coat and a tie. Ah, a mother’s hopes and dreams. I knew they were all down the drain the day you flunked out of junior college.”
“I dropped out, Mamma.”
“We’re family, Petie. You flunked out. Don’t be polite.”
“I wear a tie to work, Mamma.”
“You wear a tie. The crazy Albanian who runs the fruit stand up on Clark Street wears a tie.” Lena put her mirror and lipstick back inside her purse. “Whenever the ladies come in he smiles and pinches the cucumbers.” She blotted her lips with a tissue. “That’s all men think of nowadays. I tell you, son, that girl ruined your life. Just look at you. Why can’t you at least shave off your mustache?”
Peter braked suddenly at a red light on Colley. “Papa, did you ever feel like giving someone we know and love a little punch?”
“Petie!” Lena said, one hand flying to her breastbone, the other brushing the top of her black hat.
Gus stared out the window, then turned to Peter and smiled. “That’s a good question. Don’t think I was never tempted. But what good would it do? I’m not a brute. I once knew a man who hit his wife—remember Sal, Lena? The time he raised a hand to Sophie? We visited him in the intensive care. He couldn’t carry on a conversation because of all the tubes in his mouth and nose, so we’d stand by his bed and say, ‘Hello, Sal, we hope your bones set, we hope the doctors can stop the bleeding. The priest is on his way to give you the Last Rites.’” Gus laughed. “They were boring visits. All Sal could do was gurgle.” He caught Peter’s eye, then nodded at Lena. “A man lives and learns. Are you taking us to church, Petie?”
“Of course, Papa.” Peter revved his engine. “Why?”
“Because unless I’m seeing things we already drove past this post office.” He pointed again beyond the windshield.
The Chevy roared across the intersection. Lena stared straight ahead, her arms folded atop her purse. She seemed made of stone or ice. The engine popped and whined as Peter put it through its gears. “There are an awful lot of post offices down here in the South, Papa. And every one looks alike. I figured I’d take the scenic route and show you some of the sights. We’ll get to the church in no time.”
“Messenger boy,” Lena said finally.
“What?” Peter and Gus said, surprised.
“Messenger boy. Flunky. Lackey. That’s what I raised. A stooge. Big deal, so he wears a tie, maybe even a nice pair of dress pants, not that he puts them on when I come a thousand miles to see him. So he has clean hands. But he’s still somebody’s errand boy.”
“I’m a courier, Mamma.”
“You’re one of the Three Stooges. The stupid fat one they hit all the time in the face. Oh, I never liked that show. And I never liked those Marx Brothers, honking their horns at innocent women and walking all over good furniture and throwing pies in your face.” Lena took a deep breath. “So your papa should hit me? I’ll show you hit, Petie boy. Pull over. Augusto, hand me your belt. He’s not too old to beat.”
“The boy didn’t mean anything—” Gus began.
“Augusto, he showed disrespect.” Lena swallowed. “Take us to the airport. We’re going home.”
Peter drove, his mother’s words falling around him like slaps. In the sky a pair of seagulls squealed and soared. “Mamma,” he said, “Mamma, I’ve always tried to do my best. It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t find a job in Chicago. I looked. I tried. But when Lorraine didn’t come back from Tucson I felt devastated.” He glanced at Lena to see if she was softening. “Mamma, I was hurt. I was abandoned. I was lonely and without love.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “There’s a church. Or is it another post office?”
The Chevy bounced forward, free of stop signs, red lights. “I thought about becoming an alcoholic, Mamma, and then I considered trying marijuana, paint thinner, Coke and aspirin. At night I walked the rainy streets, hoping I’d get mugged. I was broken and shattered, Mamma. I even thought about committing the unforgivable sin of suicide. I figured I’d cross State and Madison in front of a taxicab, or I’d blow out the pilot and put the oven on broil.”
“There’s one,” Gus said. “No, it’s Southern Baptist.”
“I thought about swallowing razor blades, Mamma. Jumping off the Hancock. Going to a White Sox game and telling everyone I liked the Yankees. But then one night I heard a church bell ring, and I thought about your love.”
“Go on,” Lena waved. She unsnapped her purse, found a tissue.
“Yeah,” Peter said, “it was nearly noon and the church bells—”
“You said it was at night.”
“Episcopalian,” Gus said, “or else a fire station.”
“I mean it was midnight, Mamma, and I felt so low I could have gone into a grocery store and eaten a jar of Ragu.”
“Ugh!” Lena said. “Cat food! Change the subject before I’m sick.”
“Your love saved me, Mamma.”
“So that’s why you moved away, Petie? You don’t make sense.”
“No, Mamma, no, I moved to get experience. They told me at all the job interviews I didn’t have enough experience. Someday I’ll move back.”
“Catholic, Petie! Roman Catholic! Look, a crucifix and everything! Stop the car!”
“Petie, why didn’t you ever tell me?” Lena dabbed her eyes.
Peter pulled over to the curb, tire walls scraping the concrete. “You never asked me, Mamma. You assumed it was because of Lorraine.”
Gus had opened his door and was untangling his legs from the blanket, his trousers from the springs. Lena patted her son’s head. Even though the engine was shut off, the Chevy knocked and sputtered and coughed.
“She was a nice girl, Petie, maybe a little too thin and too stuck up with her nose in the clouds, but she was a pleasant girl to talk to. Still, she wasn’t the right girl for you.”
“I know, Mamma. But a man’s got to have experience.” He helped his mother slide out of the car.
“You’ll have to tell us more about your job. You deliver important things, like telegrams and legal contracts?”
“Not telegrams, Mamma. Actually I deliver interoffice communications. But my job requires responsibility and punctuality.”
Lena smiled. “Those are nice things, Petie.�
�
“Mass starts in five minutes,” Gus said, returning to the car. “Is my hair combed?” He touched his wife’s elbow. “Do I look all right?”
Lena licked two of her fingers and smoothed her husband’s hair. “It’s a nice church, Petie, not one of those new ugly ones?”
Gus walked behind his son, checking his hair in the side mirror.
“It’s beautiful, Mamma.” Peter had never seen the church before. “I come here every Sunday.”
Lena laughed. “Of course you do. Starting today.” She pinched his cheek. “Right after Mass we’ll introduce ourselves to the pastor and sign you up.” She smiled and turned. “August, don’t waste so much time. We don’t want to walk in late.”
Gus wagged his head.
“Walk on this side of me, August.”
“Coming, Lena.”
“Introibo ad altare Dei,” Peter said. I will go unto the altar of God. “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” To God who giveth me joy to my youth.
“And you walk on this side, Peter.” Lena was smiling. The bright morning sunshine spilled their long shadows across the sidewalk. “I want us to enter the church together, like one big happy family.”
The shadows swam together as Peter took his mother’s arm, then kissed her cheek. “Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in saecula saeculorum.” As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end.
The Walk-on
In the beginning Nick sits in a second-row desk, the first day of a fall semester sophomore speech class, eagerly tapping his feet and chewing bubble gum. He stands when the instructor nods to him, jogs to the front of the room, cocks his baseball cap, then leans over to get the catcher’s signals. He shakes off the first sign. Then he straightens, going into his windup, and says, “My name is Nick DiSalvo. I’m last year’s walk-on from Chicago, the kid who earned the scholarship, the fourth starter. I’m pleased to meet you all.” The class smiles. The instructor nods. Nick looks around and then sits back down.
Anne watches from the fifth row, sitting near the on-deck circle in the sun. Nick turns as the instructor points to her, hears the swish of her nylons as she stands, hears the roar of the crowd, hears her step lightly across the room to the plate and softly clear her throat.
“I’m Anne Chambers,” she says. “I’m your average beautiful girl, but Nick, if you sit next to me, I’ll become something very special, and in the end I’ll break your heart.”
The class smiles. Nick smiles. Anne smiles. Nick moves his desk next to hers the following day.
The ending takes place during the spring of Nick’s senior year, just outside the Student Union, while Nick is heading through the midday change of classes toward the Administration Building to try to take out another student loan. Nick sees Anne walking down the Union’s back steps. He starts to walk away, then stops. He waits for her to come over and say hello to him. Anne’s arms are full of books—her skin seems to glow but she looks heavy—and her eyes are lined and worried.
They smile nervously and talk. She about her studies, papers, tests, and he about his season, how tough it is this year without a scholarship, how he has lost his fastball, how he is no longer the fourth starter. He offers her some bubble gum but she refuses. When he leaves he says, “Take care, Anne, I’ll see you around.”
Anne says, “No, Nick, probably not,” and waves.
She is correct.
For both die that day. Nick, on his way to the third-floor Office of Student Loans, just outside the second-floor Office of Athletic Scholarships, of a severe fall down the cold marble steps of the Administration Building, after slipping on a banana peel, of a concussion, a contusion on the brain. And Anne by a falling meteor, on the corner of Sixth Street and Race, a short cruel block away from her apartment, her lined and worried eyes indented by the visitor from outer space, a case for the insurance companies and the record book.
In Fort Gordon, Georgia, Lt. David Michael Harper is cleaning his rifle behind his barracks when a private shouts out and David turns his head, then stands and takes a step around the corner, onto a seldom-used driveway, but into the path of a supply truck speeding its way from the enlisted men’s cafeteria. The right front fender bumps Harper’s body. Harper’s head bounces on the pavement. This accident goes to court.
It is a day for death. Which does not actually happen.
But Nick DiSalvo wishes it had, wishes he were the manager of his own team, wishes he could make out the lineup, write the substitutions in at will. It is December, a cold and very lonely seven months after the day outside the Student Union, and Nick is in Chicago walking up the steps to his third-floor apartment. Nick pretends he is ascending the pitcher’s mound, pretending the mound is made of marble. He sees the banana peel out of the corner of his eye, he thinks of Anne—it is too late—she turns and waves, he slips and falls. At the second flight of steps Nick imagines the meteor as it burns a hot white trail across the blue Illinois sky, then rushes down through telephone wires, through the tops of trees, through twigs and budding leaves, through Anne’s upturned head. In his apartment he sits at the edge of his bed and reaches for a cigarette. His foot presses down the imaginary accelerator. He pushes in the lighter on the dashboard and neatly shifts into third. Nick hears the click of the lighter as it pops out, he sees the shining grill, the crushed bodies of a thousand and one Georgia insects on the supply truck’s radiator, then Harper falls, backward, clumsily, onto Nick’s bed, dead.
Nick lives the middle of the story. He lives it each day as he wakes, as he throws himself to the floor to do his morning push-ups, as he brushes his teeth and then spits foam into the sink, as he goes outside to run and to buy the morning paper. Nick works nights now. He is a bartender at a place called The Second Fiddle, on Broadway Avenue in New Town, the newest of four regulars. He is given all morning and afternoon to think of meteors, to plot trajectories, to situate banana peels, to accelerate heavy trucks. Always it is a meteor, though sometimes it gives out the private’s shout, swinging south over Georgia before it settles on Sixth and Race in Champaign. Sometimes the banana is a carrot—the truck, a motorcycle. This morning in gray and cold December Nick is adding another variation. The meteor, the banana peel, and the speeding supply truck are each carrying notes.
“Hey,” the notes read, “we need some help out here!”
Nick wonders if Anne would have time to read it. If the meteor yells to her as well, perhaps she’d have time to look up. Time to make out the dark letters between the leaves. Time to get the general idea. Time to realize, at least, who the message is from.
It is from Nick DiSalvo, on the mound for the University of Illinois Fighting Illini, the skinny, cocky walk-on who not only makes the team his first year out by striking out seven Purdue Boilermakers in a row during a freshman game but is given a varsity scholarship and the fourth-starter job his second year, looking adequate against Ohio State, respectable against Iowa, fantastic against Minnesota, only to lead the Big Ten in total walks and hit batsmen his third season, and to lose his scholarship and his starting role during his fourth. Sitting out in the bullpen, Nick the freshman smiles and autographs scorecards, gets the nod during the fifth inning of the second game and jogs to the mound, mows down fourteen consecutive Indiana Hoosiers, bringing the lazy shirt-sleeve crowd to its feet. Nick the sophomore breaks out unevenly from the pack, he struggles, loses his first start against the Badgers of Wisconsin, but then he finds his groove, pitches a clean three-hitter against Michigan. As a junior Nick worries, he snaps his bubble gum and frets, he hits everybody—opposing pitchers, four Northwestern Wildcats in succession in the bottom of the ninth of a close game, even the umpire once, once even Anne’s roommate Bev, his fastball tailing up and around and into the stands. Nick the senior starts his last season riding the bench, he picks up his share of splinters, he jokes to the sophomores about always having the toothpick but never the bite, the desire, the catsup and mustard and relish to win the bi
g one.
Against the Spartans of Michigan State in his final appearance, Nick is surprised when he escapes the first inning undamaged, is relaxed until the third when he gives up a hit and a walk, and then he balks.
His catcher plods to the mound. “You got problems today, DiSalvo?”
“Tell me about it,” Nick says. He squeezes the baseball and wipes his forehead, his eyes searching the stands for Anne.
“Keep ’em low,” says the catcher.
And Nick nods, decides to get tough, decides to pitch his heart out. He fans the next two batters, then gets the third on an easy grounder. He surrenders a double in the fourth but doesn’t let the man across. He strikes out the side in the fifth, fans two out of three in the sixth, his fastball back, his eyes still searching, the game still scoreless. Until the rain.
“Guess who wins this one?” The catcher shrugs, spits. Dark puddles blotch the field.
Nick doesn’t want to leave the dugout. “It isn’t fair,” he says.
“No shit. We should have scored some for you.”
“But we didn’t.”
“We sure had our chances. No shit.”
“It just isn’t fair.”
“You pitched real well. You had this game, DiSalvo.”
“A meaningless rain-out.”
It is evening.
Nick relives the middle of the story. He dresses and heads for The Second Fiddle, he walks briskly out into the clear December air, he leaves Speech 201 class with Anne on his arm.
“Nick,” Anne says, “I have to mail a letter.”
Nick sees the blue and red stripes on the sides of the envelope. Anne looks straight ahead. Nick thinks, wonders, speculates, stops on the bicycle path just outside busy Lincoln Hall, near the library and the street. He squats and takes a deep breath.
Anne stops too, in the middle of the street. The traffic slows, honks, weaves around her. A three-speed brushes Nick’s pitching arm.
“What’s the matter, Nick?” Anne says.
Students begin to gather. Several motorists on Wright Street turn off their engines to watch. Librarians pour out of the library, squinting in the bright sunlight. The passing Illini cross-country team slows to a standing-in-place trot.
The Evening News Page 13