The Sadness of Beautiful Things: Stories

by Simon Van Booy

  One day she noticed a sign in the window of a restaurant. It was where the Italian section began, but in the evenings, Celia liked to walk all over.

  Help was wanted making dough. The restaurant was dark, with burgundy drapes and oil paintings of ruined castles and shipwrecks. It was outside regular eating hours, but in the kitchen, men were sitting on crates playing cards. When she told them she wanted to help make the dough, they took cigarettes out of their mouths and laughed. But one of them—a stocky Sicilian called Reggie—got up and asked what experience she had. Celia told them how, as a girl, she had made the family bread with her mother and knew all the tricks. When he spoke the other men were quiet. He had very dark skin and a barrel chest.

  After a few months, she had learned a few words of Italian, and Reggie knew a folk song in Irish. As he was several inches shorter than Celia, they drew glances as he walked her back to the boardinghouse every night. Then he waited by the gate until the door had opened and she was inside.

  A year later Reggie had saved and borrowed enough to open his own place. Would Celia work for him? She could be in charge, he said. Wasn’t that what she wanted?

  All this time Celia had been trying to keep away from her feelings, but she left her job to work with the ambitious Sicilian. He was right—she wanted to be in charge.

  After another year, on one of their walks home, Reggie asked Celia to marry him. She quickly told him she couldn’t, but when they got to her boardinghouse he waited at the gate like always, to make sure she got safely inside. And because of this, she accepted his proposal the next day.

  * * *

  • • •

  Three years later they had four restaurants with a factory in the Bronx making pasta to supply other eating houses in the city. They were best friends as much as husband and wife—and while she knew about his temper, Reggie had never once raised his voice or spoken harshly in her presence.

  Eventually, of course, she told him.

  She had to.

  It was too hard, she said, living out a marriage with a lie underneath. She feared her husband would be upset, and he was upset, but not for the reason she thought. He stood with his hands flat on the walnut desk.

  “You gotta go back to Eyeland and get her.”

  “And bring her here, Reggie? To be with us?”

  “That’s right, but don’t be surprised if she’s taller than me.”

  “But what will people think? What will they say when I return with a child?”

  “To hell with people.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  He said that he would not. That it was something she needed to do alone.

  A few days later, Celia Fidanzati sailed first-class on the Blue Stork. For most of the trip she stood on deck in her long coat. But sometimes she went down to the shared quarters and made friends with girls who were alone.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a week before Kitty O’Donnell’s eighty-second birthday when a lawyer came from Dublin to see her. He was a partner at the law firm, and from his briefcase he took a folder with copies of Celia’s marriage and death certificates stamped by the New York authorities. He also had photocopies of a newspaper article. Something from the obituary section of the New York Times. At the bottom of the article was a photograph of Celia and Reggie when they were first married—when the company was just the two of them.

  Also in the lawyer’s possession was a letter, written by Celia, that he offered to read aloud because Mrs. O’Donnell’s hands were shaking.

  The things written in the letter were difficult to accept.

  The lawyer sat there and let her take it in. When she cried he gave her a tissue. When she really wept, he stepped outside and waited until she was ready to go on.

  “It’s a hard thing to find out so late you were adopted,” the lawyer told Kitty.

  “I think the worst of it,” she said, her voice faltering, “was that I never got to thank my parents, the ones who adopted me. I would like to have thanked them for making me believe I was theirs.”

  The lawyer was good-natured. “You were theirs.”

  “Oh, how I loved them,” Kitty said. “And I would like to have told my husband—not that it would have mattered much, but we told each other everything, you know.”

  Soon it was time for the lawyer to leave. “Now don’t you rush, Mrs. O’Donnell, and don’t give a thought to the money until you’ve made peace with yourself, that’s just my advice. Take it or leave it.”

  She didn’t move for a long time.

  Until it was dark, and one by one, things in the kitchen began to disappear.

  With the papers still spread out before her on the table, a memory came back. It was something deep and hidden, which the day’s events must have dislodged.

  When Kitty was nine or ten years old, she saw a woman standing at the end of her street. She had on a long coat with a belt, and her hair was pinned neatly under a hat. The street was full of children running and shouting, but the woman was looking at her. She was sure of it. Just standing there at the end of the road, staring at her. She remembered that she stopped jumping. The rope fell slack. The woman stood out against the gray, wet houses.

  Kitty remembered that in the pocket of her old housedress was a marble. She had found the marble, and wondered if it belonged to the woman, and that she had come to claim it.

  Then it started to rain. But the woman in the long coat did not move. She just stood there, at the end of the road, staring as the heavy drops soaked into her clothes and the other children disappeared, one by one, into their homes.

  There was family in America, the lawyer had told her, but Kitty felt it was too late, just too late for anything to be changed—except of course in her heart. That was very changed. She felt open now, to the world, to the people suffering and the places outside the village that she heard about on the news. The terrible things they went through were the things her mother must have felt too.

  But as she aged, Kitty O’Donnell found herself thinking mostly about her grandfather—the man who had marched his child to the edge of the village with a gun. She thought about him a lot. She even went and found where he was buried, then lay down on the ground and put her arms around the stone where his name was written.

  The Green Blanket

  Mrs. Stucci had been awake since the early hours, waiting for the right moment to call her daughter. The girl was close to her father and would not take the news well.

  At eight o’clock, she opened a window, and then stood with one hand on the green rotary phone, counting the hours back to the time in Los Angeles. Mrs. Stucci imagined her daughter’s brown hair on the pillow. A glass of clear water on the nightstand. Her arms and legs bare under a sheet. Whether she was alone, or had a man she’d never told her mother about.

  Benedetta sat up quickly when the phone rang. A dream she had been having came apart like tissue in water.

  When Benedetta was in college, she’d begged to take the green rotary phone back to her sorority.

  Her mother thought it was a trick. “How are we going to call you without a telephone?”

  “Get a modern one, Mom, like everyone else in America.”

  Her father was amused. Folded his Racing Pages under one arm. “She probably doesn’t want us to call, did you think of that?”

  Her mother couldn’t believe it. “Is that true, Benedetta?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’ll buy you a cordless one, then you can talk to me from any room in the house.”

  But Mrs. Stucci was in a bad mood because her daughter was going away again. “Your father only knows how to work the green one, Benedetta.”

  Mr. Stucci rubbed the bristles on his chin.

  “Don’t bring me into this.”

  * * *

  • • •

 
The phone was on a wooden table next to a wicker chair, which was where it had always been. It was Mrs. Stucci’s favorite place in the house. No one else sat there but her.

  After she had spoken to her daughter for fifteen minutes, Mrs. Stucci hung up and went into the kitchen, where she took appliances and bread pans down from the cupboards.

  Benedetta was coming home—not under the best circumstances—but by evening, she would be sitting on the couch helping her mother figure everything out.

  Her husband, Mr. Stucci, was in the living room. He had been there all night in the same clothes since it happened. The television was on, but he was not watching it.

  On the way to Los Angeles Airport, Benedetta canceled her meetings by leaving messages at offices in Century City. On the flight to JFK, she skimmed through a book on depression she had downloaded to her electronic reader.

  Her father was never depressed when she was growing up. In fact he was the opposite, always seeing the bright side—even in a crisis. Perhaps all the deferred misery had built up over time and was now coming out like things stuffed into a closet for too long.

  He met her mother at Catholic high school on Staten Island. They went to prom in a blue Cadillac. On the phone that morning, Benedetta learned her mother had been keeping things from her—and that for the past year, her father had been showing signs. At first he was simply reluctant to do anything outside of his routine. Mrs. Stucci thought it was fatigue—that he was finally showing his age.

  Then the silences started.

  Hours would go by without a word—even when Benedetta visited for Easter the year before and they made a cake. She should have noticed it then. Her once jovial father, just sitting there, staring at photographs in crumbling albums of Easters past, pointing to an image of Benedetta dressed as a rabbit, or of his wife with her hair in rollers in the back of a station wagon. That was the time they drove out to the Delaneys’ in Massapequa.

  Eventually her mother had to walk in and take the album away. “I need two tomatoes,” she said. “Ask your daughter to go with you.”

  “But it’s Easter, Connie, everywhere is closed.”

  “If a meteor were about to hit the Earth, Mr. Anthony would still be open, trust me.”

  Benedetta remembered it was snowing lightly. Just light flakes falling without any sound. Her father told her to put one hand in his coat pocket like when she was a girl.

  “It’s good to get out of the house, Dad,” she had told him.

  When they got to Lorimer Meats, there was an old song playing, “Tanti Anni Fa,” which her father whistled as they left the shop, each holding a tomato.

  “Imagine, Benedetta—these were our hearts.”

  On the way home he told his daughter that if he could do life all over again, he would have gone to night school. Tried to be more than just a school bus driver.

  Then he mentioned his brother Giorgio, who drowned one Sunday afternoon in the Rockaways when he was only nine. Benedetta’s father was seven. He had tried to go in—but his mother grabbed both his arms.

  Giorgio had almost made it. Their father got within yards before a wave tore off his glasses. Then all he could do was shout; try to dive down.

  “You look at everything different when you get older,” Mr. Stucci told his daughter. “So don’t get old, kiddo.”

  There weren’t many people outside. The snow had thickened and was sticking to their shoes.

  * * *

  • • •

  As the aircraft taxied on the runway at JFK, Benedetta wondered if it could be his cholesterol medication. She would read the labels when she got there, and look things up on the Internet.

  The taxi driver didn’t want to go to Williamsburg, but the airport dispatcher told him he had to if he wanted a fare.

  There was so much traffic on the Cross Island Parkway, they took local streets. The overflowing trash cans, abandoned construction projects, and quick sprays of graffiti made Benedetta feel something. Made her realize how much of her life had taken place somewhere other than home.

  Her mother appeared as she was paying the driver.

  “He’s in the living room eating Pop-Tarts.”

  Benedetta dragged her small suitcase up the steps.

  “Have you spoken to Dr. Schillinger?”

  But as they went inside, Mrs. Stucci started to cry. “I’m afraid they’ll take him away.”

  In the sitting room, her father was exactly as her mother had described on the phone.

  “Dad!” she said. But only his eyes acknowledged her.

  “Oh my God! He’s had a stroke. Call 911!”

  But then Mr. Stucci said something.

  “I haven’t had a stroke.” He sighed.

  “Dad?”

  “You live for a few years, sweetheart, and then all those memories you make as a family just wash away to nothing.”

  Mrs. Stucci shook her head. “He’s not making any sense.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “I just don’t see the point in all of it. For all we know, we’re never going to see each other again after this life, we’re just gonna float around in space like dolls for all I know.”

  Mrs. Stucci looked at her daughter and mouthed the word “dolls” as though it were something terrifying. In the early evening she told Benedetta to go out for pasta salad.

  Lorimer Meats was busy with construction workers and policemen buying packages of sausage. Then the owner appeared and asked how things were going at home.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Well, you’re here, and it’s not Easter or Christmas—something must be happening.”

  “My father is depressed, Mr. Anthony. Nobody knows what to do with him.”

  Mr. Anthony asked if he had seen a doctor.

  “Mom says he’s seen a few. He feels that life is pointless now that he’s getting older.”

  “Pointless?” Mr. Anthony laughed, cupping his hands. “It’s all pointless. Whoever said there was a point?”

  As she was leaving the shop, she heard her name being called. It was Mr. Anthony.

  “I should have mentioned it to your mother before. Take your father to see Dr. Ping in Chinatown. He’s an Oriental doctor.”

  “Ping?”

  “Yeah, yeah, like Ping-Pong. Here’s his card—he helped Mrs. Anthony and her last years couldn’t have been brighter.”

  Benedetta looked at the card:

  Dr. MO PING

  EYE DOCTOR FOR HEAD CASES

  “I am looking forward to you”

  114 Bayard Street, 5D, New York, NY 10013

  1 (212) 888-8888

  52 Main Street, East Hampton, NY 11937

  1 (631) 327-8888

  When she got home, her mother studied the card while her husband was napping.

  “‘I am looking forward to you’?” she whispered. “What does that mean?”

  “He helped Mrs. Anthony,” Benedetta said.

  “I don’t know if your father needs an eye doctor, in Chinatown of all places, but it was thoughtful of Mr. Anthony. What did he charge you for the salad?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Benedetta woke the next morning to the sound of her mother screaming. Mr. Stucci had gotten up in the middle of the night, gone into the attic without anyone hearing—then brought down Christmas decorations and put them all over the house.

  He had even dragged in a potted tree from the porch. It stood in front of the television with lights and a fairy on top.

  The most frightening part was that a Santa Claus outfit, missing for decades, had been discovered by accident and clumsily pulled on over his striped pajamas.

  When Benedetta walked in, her father was sitting in his chair.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” he said through the rag
ged fibers of a fake beard.

  Mrs. Stucci was crying her eyes out. “Look! Look!” she sobbed, pointing to the floor. Arranged neatly on the carpet was a small collection of Benedetta’s old dolls, and a Christmas elf her father had wrapped in toilet paper.

  Her mother blew her nose, then lifted her chin defiantly. “Let’s try Mr. Anthony’s friend, the Chinese doctor. It’s time for something different.”

  It took a lot of convincing for Mr. Stucci to agree. He didn’t even like Chinese food. In the end, Benedetta had to threaten him with taking the next flight back to Los Angeles. Within an hour, the Stucci family was in a car service halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge heading for Chinatown.

  “Where’s Bayard Street? the driver said indifferently. “I only know Canal Street.”

  “Why do you think we took a taxi?” Mrs. Stucci said indignantly. “You’re supposed to know these things—it’s your trade!”

  Benedetta typed the address into her phone and gave the driver specific directions. They came to a stop outside a restaurant called A Palace of Lucky Dragons.

  “This can’t be the address,” Mrs. Stucci said. “It’s a place to eat.” Then she looked around. “It’s all restaurants here.”

  A Chinese man with a cane wobbled by slowly enough for Mrs. Stucci to show him the business card. The man looked at her, then raised his cane in the direction of the restaurant.

  “Go through A Palace of Lucky Dragons. Office in back. Do you have appointment?”

  “No, we don’t,” Mrs. Stucci said. “Do we need one?”

  “How should I know? But Ping good; all Chinese people love Mo Ping.” Then he pointed to a red Maserati parked on the street. “That’s his car.”

  Mrs. Stucci stared at the gleaming automobile. “He must be good—you don’t get something like this from being a quack.”

  Grabbing the tail of a golden dragon, Benedetta led her parents through the darkened restaurant. White teacups and plates were stacked up on trolleys, ready for the lunch rush.