The Breaking of a Wave

by Fabio Genovesi

  My only answer is to smile. I’m happy this way, in general. After six months my zombielike Mom is out of the house and asking me what I would prefer and her voice is no longer flat-lined but alive. It travels up and down while she talks. Heck no I’m staying home while she goes shopping.

  But we still have to stop there a minute. Mom leaves the engine running and gets out. She asks me if I need to go to the bathroom but I don’t, so I sit here alone, with the idle engine just barely rattling me. Merged with the patter of the rain, the sound makes me sleepy. I close my eyes, stick my hand in my sweatshirt pocket, and run my fingers over this wonderful bone again. It’s very smooth with every once in a while some rougher spots, like little close-knit holes, which may be the sea’s doing or else that’s the way it was made and nature knows what these little holes are for. Rubbing this whalebone puts me at ease, really soothes me. When I think about how I came to find it, I start shaking and my heart begins to pound.

  I asked Mom. I asked the nurses in the ER. No one had seen it. Of course they hadn’t. I’d fainted and they’d wasted no time. They said that I was strung with seaweed, twigs stuck to my shirt, but who would have noticed a bone this white in my white hair? My big brother, who’d promised it to me, had kept it well hidden.

  The night he died I sat in a chair with Mom and Miss Gemma. Sometimes I’d drift off and sometimes I wouldn’t, and amid all those awful thoughts about Luca swirling in my head—if he’d been aware what was happening, if he’d suffered, where he was, if he was somewhere at all—amid all those things I suddenly remembered the last words I’d said to him as he was running out of the house with his backpack on and his friends waiting for him in the van. He’d stopped, turned around, kissed Mom on the cheek and me on the forehead. To Mom he’d said thanks and to me he’d said he loved me. And I’m so ashamed I didn’t answer him: “I do too, I love you so much, Luca.” No, all I’d said (referring to the whalebone) was: “Will you really get me one?” He laughed. “Of course I’ll get you one. Look, Luna, I won’t come home until I’ve found one for you, understand?”

  In fact he never did come home. Yet he’d gotten the bone and made sure it found its way to me. How did he do it? What happened? How . . .

  I don’t know. I’m totally in the dark. Except I know that when I rub this wonderful bone it feels like when Luca used to hug me and I’d yell, “Stop it! Stop it!” even though I didn’t really want him to stop. And his skin was kind of smooth yet rough in places on account of his beard, exactly like this bone. I run my finger over it and it’s like picking up his scent, seeing him again for a second, hearing his voice.

  Then, once that second’s up, I hear nothing but Mom cursing, soupy from the rain.

  She enters the car. Raindrops splash my hands and face.

  “What happened, Mom? Did something happen?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. She opens a soaking wet piece of paper, irons it out on her chest, and reads it again.

  “Mom, what happened? Did something happen to the house?”

  “No, Luna. I don’t know. No . . . It’s locked. I didn’t go in.” And her voice has gone flat and robotic again. She sounds like those machines you put money into that say, “Have a nice day.”

  “What do you mean locked? You don’t have the keys?”

  “I do but they don’t work . . . ” Her back begins to shake weirdly, as if she had the hiccups. But it’s not hiccups, I don’t think. It’s that she’s really crying.

  I look at her and run my finger along the bone. I so badly want to do something, or say something, the right thing, whatever will make her feel better. But it’s hard when you don’t know what’s the matter, when you understand zippo. Still, I try telling her not to worry if she doesn’t feel like going shopping, that maybe I really am tired and we can go lie down in the house for a while. But that makes Mom cry harder, so I sit still and say and do nothing.

  Till a minute later I jump from fright when from outside in the pounding rain comes a knock on the window and a scream, a voice almost drowning, crying for help.

  Mom grabs the handle and rolls down the window, and in comes the rain and the face of Zot.

  “What’s up, kid? What is it?”

  “For the love of God, help! SOS! SOS!”

  “Zot, calm down, what happened? Catch your breath and tell me what happened.”

  “SOS! SOS!”

  “What does SOS mean?” I ask.

  Zot clutches his chest and, with what little breath he has left, replies: “SOS . . . it’s the inter . . . international . . . distress . . . signal . . . it means Save Our Souls . . . or Save Our Ship . . . in Morse code . . . it’s three dits . . . three dahs . . . and—”

  I’m about to ask what a Morse code is when Mom grabs him by the arm. “Cut the crap. What happened?”

  “Grandfather . . . Grandfather . . . SOS.”

  “Ferro?” I ask, and Zot nods.

  “Grandfather . . . Dry Death . . . help!”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” says Mom.

  Zot doesn’t answer. He just stands there in the rain, clutching his chest. Mom steps out of the car, picks him up, and tosses him in the backseat like he was junk mail. Then we speed off toward his house. But I’m wondering, if this is such an emergency, why didn’t he call a neighbor instead of coming all the way over here? I take a minute to think about it, about the houses between here and Ghost House. One belongs to a Milanese, one to a man from Parma, and three to Russians. Who the others belong to is anyone’s guess. They’re always empty. The windows are open just one month during the year, in August, the rest of the time they’re sealed shut. So, even if there are two streets crammed with mansions and mini-mansions between our house and Ghost House, Zot’s real neighbors are Mom and me.

  Who drive all the way to his house, jump out of the car, and cut through the forest, where the rain has lifted a little and there’s the powerful smell of a thousand things balled together. We enter the house and everything is just the same as it was the other day, except Ferro is lying facedown on the floor, not moving, one arm twisted like it were fake. And next to him a rifle.

  DRY DEATH

  Grandfather! Dearly beloved Granddaddy!”

  Zot drops to his knees next to Mr. Ferro, makes the sign of the cross, and tries to hug him, but it’s not so easy with him laid out on the floor like that. “Talk to me, Grandfather! I implore you, Granddaddy!”

  Ferro has on two gigantic wooden clogs and no socks, and the arm near his rifle is droopy and whitish like a dead octopus tentacle at the fish market.

  I don’t know what happens next, since Mom shields my eyes with her hands.

  “It’s not fair!” screams Zot, his voice trembling. “He was so good. He didn’t seem good but he was. He had a heart of gold. Grandfather, sweet Granddaddy, why? O Lord up in Heaven, o Saint Felix, o Saint Catherine of Siena . . . .”

  Mom takes her hands off my eyes, because she needs them to shove aside Zot and lean over Ferro. She removes the rifle, takes the old man by his droopy dead arm, and, tugging hard, manages to turn him over on his backside. She places two fingers on his neck and her ear to his heart. But maybe she can’t hear him too well, since she moves her head up and down endlessly until this booming voice full of phlegm emerges from the afterlife: “Oh yeah, that’s a good girl, keep going, the grand prize is right down there.”

  Mom bolts to her feet and Zot throws himself on top of Mr. Ferro.

  “Grandfather! You’re alive! Jesus of love aflame, thank you! Thank you, Lord! Sweet Granddaddy!”

  “Get lost, blue-baller, leave me and this pretty piece of tail alone!”

  Ferro tries to get up but doesn’t have the strength, so he turns on his side instead. His white shirt is hiked up and you can see his gut, which is so big it hides his underwear, mercifully, and below that two bony legs that don’t seem to belong
to him, like two sticks jammed on at the end.

  “Who are you supposed to be, good-looking, my nurse?”

  “Me? I’m nobody. Zot called me—”

  “Ah, you’re his friend, huh? You Russians sure are little devils. Your friend likes to pretend he’s an orphan from Chernobyl. What about you? You a nurse or street meat?”

  “Neither. I only came here to see if you were dead. Unfortunately it appears you’re not.”

  Ferro makes a noise I can’t interpret. I don’t even know where it comes from. It sounds like a cross between a coughing fit and a pebble caught in a lawnmower.

  “Don’t bullshit me. You’re an infiltrator same as him. They put him in my house and told him he was a radioactive orphan. Who’d ever buy that? You hear him speak Italian? Christ, kid talks better than me.”

  “But it’s a simple language, Grandfather. Besides, I like it. I learned it by listening to your greatest singers: Claudio Villa, the Quartetto Cetra, Gino Latilla . . . Sister Anna was Italian. We used to sing those songs together all the time.”

  “Sure, you bet, an Italian nun in Chernobyl. A spy is what I call her. First comes this rotten kid and now you with your nurse/street meat routine. You pretend to minister to me meanwhile you’re slowly poisoning me to death. That’s your plan, isn’t it? But I don’t care. Go back to Russia and tell them Ferruccio Marrai isn’t going anywhere. This is my house and I won’t budge.”

  No one says anything. So I do: “Mr. Ferro, Mom’s not Russian. She’s my mom.”

  “Is that right? Then how come Snow White’s mother isn’t all white too?”

  “Listen up, asshole,” says Mom, walking over to the sink and snatching two rags that may not be clean but at least aren’t filthy. She passes one to me and we start drying off. “You can say whatever you want about Zot. Touch my daughter and I’ll kick you so hard in the balls you’ll turn blond. We came here to see if you were alive, but as far as I’m concerned you can drop dead. I’ll hand your keys over to the Russians myself. Better them than an asshole like you.”

  It’s silent for a minute. Mr. Ferruccio looks at her and coughs again. “So, kid, you’re Italian after all.”

  “No, I’m not Italian. I’m from Forte dei Marmi.”

  “Maremma Cane.” That’s all Ferro says. Then he tries to hoist himself up by latching onto the oven. He falls to the floor again. “Give me a hand!”

  Mom takes one arm, Zot and I the other. But Zot can barely lift him. There’s not a muscle in his body. Practically all he does is keep his hand on mine. Yet Ferruccio finally stands, turns toward the sink, and spits in it. He points to his rifle and Zot picks it up and hands it to him. Ferro leans on it like it was a cane.

  “You really from Forte dei Marmi or you yanking my chain?”

  “I’m from Forte. And don’t ask me again. Your bullshit is getting tired.”

  Ferro thinks for a minute, then: “That’s the style all right. Whose daughter are you anyway?”

  “I’m the daughter of Lari.”

  “You mean Stelio Lari? Pinhead?”

  Mom nods just once.

  “I’ve known your dad a lifetime. We grew up together. Crawled off the deep end in his dotage, right?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “No offense, kid, but he was always kind of stupid. Otherwise he’d never have married your mom. What a nag that woman was, always complaining, with that little voice of hers that just wore you to pieces. No wonder he lost his mind. How did your daddy put up with her?

  “You said it yourself, he was kind of stupid.”

  “Whoa there, kid,” Ferro says to Mom, suddenly very serious. “Don’t you dare insult Stelio, hear me? You better rinse your mouth before saying anything about Pinhead. He may have been set in his ways but next to you all he was a champ. Now us, we were a whole other generation, we really lived life. You all find your food in the fridge or run to the supermarket or go to a restaurant. We toiled away, busted our asses, and set this country in motion. Then you went and sold it for chickenfeed.”

  “Honestly, I always saw you at the beach doing dick all,” says Mom. “You used to lie under an umbrella and sleep.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I had my eye on the sea. That’s what a lifeguard does: keeps alert, never takes his eyes off the sea.”

  “Clearly. So alert you were snoring.”

  “Me, snore? Occasionally I’d lie down to relax, sure; lifeguarding is grueling work. But I was always vigilant and kept an eye on the sea.”

  “Is that why you were on the floor earlier, Grandfather?” asks Zot. “Were you relaxing?”

  Ferro leans on his rifle, shakes his head. “Nope. I was sound asleep earlier. That a crime?”

  “You were asleep on the ground?”

  “Yeah, and it felt heavenly.”

  “But did you lie down or—”

  “Or?”

  “Or did you fall like last time?”

  “No, I lay down. I took one look at the floor and said Sweet Mary that looks comfy. Then I stretched out. Is that okay by you?”

  “Actually it’s not, Grandfather.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can smell it, Grandfather. It was the Dry Death again.”

  I turn to Zot but there’s no need to ask; he points down at something. “Under the table,” he says. I bend over. Under the table is a huge dark glass pitcher, a jug filled with something that looks like water but isn’t water. Even with the cap on, the smell makes my eyes water and my throat burn.

  “Is it poison?” I ask, standing up. My head spins a little.

  “Poison?” says Ferro. “Nonsense.” He starts laughing and his tummy jiggles underneath his T-shirt. “That’s the best grappa on the planet.”

  “It’s called Dry Death,” Zot says gravely, as if he were introducing me to somebody he really didn’t like.

  “At first it was just called ‘Dry,’” says Ferro. “Because we wanted it to be real dry, real strong. We set up shop back of Gino’s place so you couldn’t see what we were doing from the street. Because making grappa yourself is illegal. Did you know that? What kind of country doesn’t allow you to make homemade grappa? How’s that a crime?”

  “So why did you call it Dry Death?” I ask.

  “Because people died making it.”

  “They died?”

  “Yeah, two people. We spent a week there, made enough for an army. We had rotten fruit, wine dregs, potato skins. Anything works for grappa, kids, long as it’s got juice inside, long as it’s good and potent. Even fertilizer will do. During the war they used sludge from the cesspools. They say that was special. Choice stuff. But we used rotten fruit. And as always Gino acted like he was an expert, the only one who knew what he was doing. ‘Out of the way,’ he said, ‘I’ll handle it, out of the way . . . ’ In the end he handled it all right; the gas tank blew up and he and poor Mauro bit it. May their souls rest in peace. Goodbye still and goodbye gas tank—everything was ruined forever. But we’d already brewed tons of Dry Death, so each of us took a bottle home. Amen to that.”

  He shuffles to the table, leans his rifle against the wall, and slowly sits down with an “Aaahhh,” which sounds like a cross between a sigh and a burp.

  “So what are you doing with a demijohn if you all brought back bottles?” asks Mom. She crouches next to the black barrel, unscrews the cap, and stands back up with her eyes half-mast.

  “Whoever dies leaves his share of Dry Death to his friends. We go to the funeral, take the bottle off the corpse, and divvy it up. That’s the way it’s always been. And now . . . ” Ferro pauses. “Now I’m the only one left and it’s all here with me. It’s just me and Dry Death.”

  For a while everyone’s silent except Zot. A faint sound comes from his mouth. “Hey,” it seems to say, “I’m here, I live in this house too.” But he doesn’t actual
ly talk. Mom does. “Ferro, can I taste this Dry Death?”

  “Maremma Cane!” he says with glee, and he leans against the rifle to stand up, but the gun slips out of his hand and falls on the ground. The barrel is pointing straight at me.

  Mom picks it up. “Maybe we ought to put this away.”

  But Zot explains that it’s useless, there’s another one in the bathroom.

  “Really? What are you doing with two rifles?”

  “Two, shmoo. I’ve got eleven thank you very much.”

  “Eleven rifles?”

  “Yep. Same rules as Dry Death. Whoever dies leaves his friends his grappa and his guns. I have a rifle for every window in the house and a supply of grappa that’ll last me a hundred years. Tell the Russians to bring it. Tell those sons of bitches from the agency to come here and tell me I have no choice but to sell. I may be alone but my friends are still here and ready to fight by my side.” He gestures to the haunted kitchen with a sweep of his arm. “We’re here and we’re not going anywhere.”

  He sits there staring into the emptiness and nodding his head while Mom pours Dry Death into a glass and sits down beside him. I almost sit myself. My legs hurt. The doctors told me I should rest, that I should take it easy for a while, but there hasn’t been any taking it easy on our trip back from the hospital.

  Mom lifts the glass to her lips, takes a breath, and downs her drink. She coughs, exhales, coughs again.

  When she looks like she’s started to breathe again, I ask her if we’re going to go shopping. It’s late and I’m tired.

  “We’re not going, Luna. I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

  “But there’s nothing to eat at home. What’ll we do?”

  Mom doesn’t answer right away. Maybe it’s the Dry Death rising back up her throat. Or maybe what she has to say to me is the kind of thing that comes out of your mouth with difficulty.

  “Luna, listen, there is no more home, we don’t have one anymore.”