The Ryer Avenue Story: A Novel

by Dorothy Uhnak

  Santini went through his elaborate ritual of selection before presenting a wine to Dante. An exceptional vintage, hardly the altar wine with which he had made his handsome living all these years. He had sold his altar wine business to two nephews several years ago, but was still active in his real-estate company. He handled expensive properties, and he had been pleased years ago when his daughter and son-in-law carefully selected a beautiful, larger house for themselves and their two daughters in nearby Bronxville. Aldo Santini still lived in his house in Pelham Bay; it was convenient for his business needs.

  He extended the gleaming crystal to Dante, who closed his eyes and inhaled. He nodded and exchanged toasts with his father-in-law and swallowed the remarkably fine wine.

  “I gave a case of this—nearly my last—to the cardinal last year, to celebrate his anniversary. He doesn’t set a very lavish table, this cardinal, but at least his wine is the best.”

  They indulged in small talk, the polite exchange that preceded the real reason Dante had been asked, alone, to dinner.

  “I hear you sold your father’s house to your sister and her family. Will they be happy upstate in the Catskills?”

  “They bought it as a second home. For weekends, for summer vacations.”

  “Ah, yes. Second homes.” He shrugged slightly. “Your father could never have imagined such a thing. He was happy there?”

  Dante had bought the modest property for his father’s retirement years. It was in a colony of houses owned mostly by Italians, an old-world place. Dante knew his sister had bought it as a speculation. She wouldn’t be caught dead in that setup.

  “It was a good life for him there.”

  “Your father was a good man.”

  Dante had always been deeply moved by the unexpected relationship between the two men.

  “You were a blessing to your father, Dante. I’m not sure he could ever adequately express his pride in you. The immigrant’s son, a member of the United States Senate. A wonderful accomplishment.”

  “I knew of his pride. He didn’t need the words.”

  “Yes. Between a father and a son, there is a special bond.” His eyes glowed and he sipped the wine, then said, “A tragedy for both of us, Dante, that we had no sons. I’m not too pleased that my brother’s sons have taken over my business, but they are family at any rate. And you with two girls—not that they aren’t wonderful. College girls, so bright.”

  The older man put the glass of wine down, rubbed his eyes, then gazed thoughtfully at his son-in-law. Speaking very carefully, as though with great effort, he said, “You, Dante, through the years. You have become my son. In every way. You have been a wonderful husband to my daughter, a wonderful father to my grandchildren.” He hesitated. “And a wonderful son to me. For this I thank you.”

  He shook off Dante’s reply. He had needed to say this and it had been said. Now he continued, in a different tone of voice.

  “I have been hearing some interesting things, Dante. Some very exciting things about your future plans.”

  “Nothing is definite yet, Don Santini.”

  Dante had been spending the last year testing the national political scene. Elected to his second senatorial term by the widest margin of any candidate in the state’s history, he had become known as a temperate but liberal man of high ideals and values. He was the American son of an immigrant with strong blue-collar ties. A war hero, who had worked his way, with help from the GI Bill, through college and law school. He spoke exactly the same way—thoughtfully and honestly—regardless of his audience. He was able to represent all the far-flung and disparate interests of his constituency in such a way that each particular group felt that he was their man. Dante loved public life, yet had never been pompous about the privileges of his position. His daughters had attended public high school. His wife had returned to her job as a translator for the United Nations and could converse not only with his constituents but with his colleagues, on any level.

  When their first daughter was born, Lucia-Bianca became tense and moody. The first thing she had said to him was, “Forgive me, Dante. I know you wanted a boy.” When their second daughter was born three years later, she told him in no uncertain terms, “I will never, ever consent to have another child. I will do anything else you want to please you, in bed and out. I will be your wife and your hostess and a good mother to the girls, but I will not become pregnant again, and there are no words in this world you can use to change my mind.”

  Those were her terms. She did not bar him from her bed, she did not deny him her body. But there could be no further pregnancy. While it was not said between them, it was implied: Live your life any way you find necessary, but be discreet. It was hardly the only marriage conducted on those terms, and he had successfully abided by their unspoken agreement.

  Lucia-Bianca conducted her own life fully and happily. She was a wonderful mother. Their daughters, Roseanna and Josephine, were beautiful, dark-haired, black-eyed girls who took top honors all through their parochial school days; each insisted on attending the local high school and choosing her own college.

  The shrewd Don Santini knew enough not to ask any pertinent questions. He had warned Dante; he had had his own experiences with Lucia-Bianca’s mother. He wished he had been as intelligent with his wife as Dante seemed to be with his daughter.

  There were always prices to be paid, and he was pleased that his daughter and son-in-law had led such circumspect and apparently contented lives. Their daughters were proof of a good home, and the younger daughter, Josephine, even seemed to enjoy the challenge of political life.

  Dante D’Angelo was not afraid to embrace public issues that others avoided. When he spoke, everyone hearing him knew one thing: whether you agreed with him or not, Senator D’Angelo always spoke exactly what he felt. He told the truth, and, agree with him or not, you had to respect him.

  All during the Vietnam War, he never changed his position. He felt it was a bad war, one the United States never should have undertaken. He spoke out boldly for impeachment almost as soon as the first reports about Watergate began to emerge. Nixon, the man who had been elected President by the greatest plurality in American history, resigned and a friendly, warm, inept Gerald Ford would probably stand for election in 1976.

  Quietly, polls had been taken, surveys prepared, data gathered. Of all the Democratic possibilities, Dante D’Angelo stood head and shoulders above the rest.

  Prior to his first election to the Senate, Dante was one of the most investigated candidates ever. Italian-American—did that include Mafia connections somewhere along the line? Everyone knew that every Italian had a cousin somewhere in the mob.

  For a long time, Dante had been concerned about his mother’s relatives, the Ruccis. In his characteristically direct way, he held a meeting with his resentful family.

  “We’re tough guys, Dante, sure, but mob? My God, if anybody but you dared say such a thing, he’d be in big trouble.”

  “With the wise guys?” Dante joked. He ducked as one of his uncles aimed an index finger at him. “You understand, I’m sure, that these things will be asked about all of us. Going in, I have to be sure that my being in public life will not in any way hurt or jeopardize any member of my family, so if there’s anything anyone wants to say, please, for all our sakes, say it now.”

  His uncles told him the truth he already knew; they were tough-guy immigrants who had fought their way through every obstacle in order to establish their fresh fruit and vegetable business, from which they had branched out into the meat industry, and had later seen some of their sons go into construction.

  “Dante, you know yourself,” a cousin told him, “I’m gonna do business with the building industry, I’m gonna be sure I don’t have labor problems from the union, ya know? I pay a few guys, I got peace. In any kinda business this goes on, you know it and I know it.”

  “As long as none of you are the guys who get the money, okay? Yes, I know what goes on in any business. I couldn’t
have been a DA and a defense attorney for all those years without learning a coupla things. I just gotta be sure no one in our family gets hurt in any way.”

  His male cousins were veterans. On both sides of his family, without exception, they were all hard-working men with families. Some had joined together and formed companies in the various trades: construction, manufacturing, a taxicab business. A few had gone on to college. There were two lawyers, one doctor, and a teacher—and he, this last, was low man on the family list. What kinda man wants to be a teacher? A girl’s job. The fact that he was a professor of English at Fordham University didn’t change the older family members’ opinion.

  Their manner, tense at first, resentful at being asked to explain themselves, mellowed as Dante reassured them. His voice soft and friendly, he recalled old family jokes, his modesty evident: Me, Danny, the shoemaker’s kid, running for the U.S. Senate, hey, who’s kiddin’ who here? By the time the evening ended, they had saluted each other with good red wine, stuffed themselves with the heavy, robust meal prepared by the women in the family. Dante left his relatives a relaxed group, amused, but also a little awestruck. Our little Danny, a senator, marone.

  His oldest uncle, Joe Rucci, walked him to his car, parked outside the line of attached houses still owned, if not occupied, by the suburbia-bound younger Ruccis.

  His uncle embraced him hard, pulled back, and, under the streetlight, studied his face.

  “Your mother would be so proud, Dante. Maybe a little hurt you came tonight to ask us these things. Your father, I think, maybe he always thought we was bad guys.”

  “Not really, Uncle Joe. You know Pop. He never felt any of you considered him good enough for Mom, that was all.”

  “Hey, Danny,” his uncle began tentatively, seemed uncomfortable, “there’s something I wanna ask you.”

  Dante held his breath: God, what?

  “About your father-in-law. The Don.”

  Dante smiled, puzzled. “My father-in-law?”

  “Hey, he’s a rich man, from the old country he came here and he’s all set up. He didn’t have to get his hands dirty, like most of us. So maybe, Dante, you might just take a look there, huh? If all of us is gonna be under some kinda spotlight, we better make sure we’re all clean. How they make so much money, the Santinis, they got real estate and that wine business and olive oil and everything. You think maybe, somewhere along the line … maybe somebody there is connected?”

  Dante stared at his uncle. He really couldn’t vouch for his father-in-law. He simply didn’t know.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought, at one time or another, about the great power his father-in-law seemed to wield. He had always assumed the arrogance of wealth was something that came with the rich man’s territory. “Jesus, Uncle, I gotta tell you I really don’t know.” His uncle, a short, muscular man, punched Dante on the side of his arm, and said, “Well, kid, you better find out, right?”

  He asked Aldo Santini. It wasn’t as difficult as he had feared. Through the years, Dante had learned how to talk to all kinds of people. He knew when to be street-smart and when to be diplomatic. He knew how to get to the heart of things, particularly when his own future might be in jeopardy.

  “You know, as an Italian-American I will be under particular scrutiny, Don Santini. There are plenty of people who will immediately cry ‘Mafia.’ I’ve checked with my family, the Ruccis. Now I must ask you. Is there any reason at all that you would ask me not to pursue this course? Is there any possibility that my running for public office would in any way injure or embarrass you or any other member of your family?”

  Aldo Santini considered his son-in-law for a moment. A good-looking young man, dark hair, bright black eyes, a sincere manner, a nice voice. He was a good man and a respectful man.

  “Dante, you are a born diplomat. You will be a good senator. There is no way in which any investigation into any aspect of my life or that of my family will put any of us at risk. I assure you.” And then, with a knowing smile, he asked, “But what about your family? I always wondered about the Ruccis.”

  Dante grinned. “Don Santini, if there had ever been anything suspect about them, you would never have consented to my marriage to your daughter.”

  “And was it the Ruccis who told you to look carefully into my family background?”

  “Ah, Don Santini, how can you say that?”

  Both men laughed out loud and shared wine.

  When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, first the Ruccis and then the Santinis held great family parties. They were in different locations, but the feeling of love and family was present.

  Aldo Santini had never asked Dante for anything: neither advice nor assistance nor information. Dante had no idea what this meeting this evening was about, but he knew the timing was up to the older man. He was more curious than disturbed.

  For the first time since he had known him, Santini seemed uneasy. He seemed to be searching for a way to begin. Finally, Dante set him at ease.

  “Don Santini, you have always been so wonderful to my wife and daughters and to me personally. You’ve made everything I’ve ever achieved possible with your support, financial and otherwise. How can I, in some way, serve you? I am forever in your debt, so what can I do for you now?”

  It was a courtly speech, carefully phrased to put the aristocratic man at ease. Dante knew it did not come easy for this man to request anything at all, from anyone at all.

  “Dante. When I came to this country, I was most fortunate. My father came from a family with great resources. He had been sent here to establish a branch of the family wine business. He was able to provide my sisters and me with a wonderful life. We went to the best schools, we traveled. And of course, he taught us to take care of members of the family who were not as blessed as we.

  “One particular memory of a day spent with my father—may he rest in God’s own peace—has been with me always. It was a spring day, warm and sunny, and I knew whatever treat my father had planned for me—as the only son, he gave me many responsibilities, but also many privileges—would be special. He took me that day by car—with his driver, a privilege I took for granted—down to Manhattan, to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. There was a special ceremony he had been invited to attend. Not to participate in, you see, but to witness.

  “It was the installation of those chosen to be members of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. I was a small child, maybe six or seven years old, and impatient with these things I did not understand. It was a long and amazing ceremony and my lasting impression was of giants in magnificent white robes, coming down the aisle of the cathedral. The air filled with singing voices, with chants and prayers, with incense and a feeling of holiness that even I, as an ignorant child, understood.

  “After the ceremony, my father took me for a long walk. We went up to Central Park, and finally we sat on a bench. When my father began to speak, there was a mixture of awe and sadness in his voice. I didn’t really understand, at the time, what he was saying, but through the years I have come to appreciate that mixture.

  “The sadness, I learned, came because he never was chosen. He had served the Church all his life, with his altar wines, his contributions, through whatever methods he could be of service; yet he was never selected to become a Knight. What he told me that day was of his sadness, but also of his understanding of the circumstances.

  “Being good and helpful and conscientious, serving our Church in every possible way, is excellent and only as it should be. The honors of the Church, however, are granted to very few people. The difference, he told me, is a thing called power. Powerful friends, who can call attention to your commitment and to your service. The friends, the power, the honor—was never to be for my father.”

  For the first time Dante realized that his father-in-law had grown to be an old man. He seemed drained by his reminiscence, by the confrontation with his own physical weakness. His face seemed not only sad, but weakened, with the deep lines of age and disappointments
Dante knew nothing about,

  “You, Dante, my son, have such powerful friends. That could make the difference.”

  Dante nodded, but didn’t speak. He was thinking.

  “I remember a conversation we had, you and I, a long time ago, when we exchanged, each of us, a deep and significant secret. Neither of us has ever referred to those things again. Through the years, I have seen you keep up your friendships with the friends of your childhood, and that is a wonderful and special thing. The friends of my childhood have disappeared, through the years and through different circumstances, from my life. It is only from such friends, I believe, that we have the right to request special favors.”

  He leaned forward, lifted his crystal goblet, and took a deep drink of wine. The years suddenly slipped away. The image of the dark prince once again confronted Dante. The man who knew all secrets but who still had asked for confirmation.

  “Bishop Eugene O’Brien was one of your close childhood friends, was he not?”

  Dante said nothing. He waited.

  “He was one of the youngsters on the hill with you that night you told me about. So you and he have special ties that go far deeper than the usual boyhood memories. Can you call upon this special friendship now? For me? For this honor I have dreamed of all my life, for my father’s sake as well as mine and my grandchildren’s?”

  Dante took a deep breath. In all these years, nothing further had been said by either of them about that night; and yet, as he had known, Don Santini had stored the memory away against the moment. And this was the moment.

  “I think, Don Santini, that the request could be made.”

  “Yes. Dante. Thank you. You do not have any idea what this would mean to me.”

  Dante came to the old man’s side and embraced him.

  “Yes. I think I do,” he said softly. How old the man had become.