The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  Sal drove through the traffic lights, not bothering to stop. The streets and sidewalks were deserted. Everyone was barricaded behind locked doors, waiting for angry mobs to invade their neighborhood. They arrived home to find shattered pieces of a broken Coke bottle on the sidewalk at the barbershop door, evidence, according to Sal, of an attempted break-in. He quickly led the boys upstairs and told them to sit quietly on the couch. He picked up the receiver of the kitchen phone to call his wife, clearly shaken by the booming crack of an engine backfiring on the street below.

  “All right, all right,” he said, trying to calm the frantic woman on the line. “You and the girls stay upstairs. Don’t come down. I’ll come home and make sure the back door is locked,” he reassured her.

  “Yo, Frankie,” he shouted. “I gotta run back to the house for a few minutes. Don’t you move off that couch until I get back.”

  Frankie nodded and sat quietly, waiting until he heard the barbershop door slam shut before running to turn on the television. Samantha was just beginning her sidesaddle broomstick flight across the starlit sky as he settled back on the sofa. Only Huckleberry Hound or Woody Woodpecker, not suburban witches, could hold Michael’s attention and he quickly drifted off, his head in his brother’s lap, contentedly sucking his thumb.

  Michael was cranky and tired in the morning. Still groggy with sleep, he needed his older brother’s steady hand on his shoulder to march him to the bathroom. He protested when Frankie pulled down his pajama bottoms and lifted his butt onto the toilet seat. He wasn’t a baby anymore and wanted to stand and aim for the bowl like Frankie had taught him. Frankie promised he could pee like a grown-up next time, but this morning there wasn’t time to waste wiping up the floor if Michael missed his mark as he most often did.

  “Stand still, Mikey,” Frankie pleaded as he washed and dried his brother’s hands.

  Michael kicked his legs when Frankie sat him on the edge of the bed, thinking they were playing a game. He curled his toes, resisting his brother’s efforts to slide his feet, broad and long for a child, into his slippers. He ran to the kitchen and crawled onto a chair at the table.

  “No!” he insisted when Frankie offered him a bowl of Raisin Bran.

  Michael knew what he wanted and wasn’t shy about demanding it. He picked out the desiccated pastel marshmallow Lucky Charms from the bowl and left the cereal swimming in the milk.

  The clock on the wall said seven thirty, meaning Frankie would have to dress quickly and run three blocks to Saint Catherine of Siena Elementary. Sal Pinto wandered in barefoot, having slept on the living room sofa, and lit his first cigarette of the day. He seemed uncomfortable, avoiding looking Frankie in the eyes when he told him he wouldn’t be going to school today. “Your father will be here soon,” he mumbled as he searched for an ashtray and, finding none, flicked his ash into the kitchen sink. Frankie knew then, without needing to be told, his mother was never coming home.

  Polly argued with Papa that Michael was too young to attend the open-casket viewing and, for the first time Frankie could remember, Papa conceded to one of his children. But he’d insisted both sons attend the funeral Mass and the graveside rites. Michael was restless, banging his Buster Browns on the wooden pew, not understanding that his mother was in the sealed box before the altar. Polly stood close to Papa at the cemetery, keeping vigil as they lowered the casket in the grave, but he shrugged off her arm, not wanting to be touched, when she tried to comfort him.

  That night, lying in his bed, unable to sleep, Frankie cringed at the loud, harsh voices shouting downstairs. His father and sister were fighting, Polly insisting I’m not leaving without him. He was only three, she argued, still a baby, too young to live in a house without a mother. Papa replied that no son of his was going to be raised by a whore. A shotgun wedding to the man who’d gotten her pregnant last year hadn’t redeemed her in her father’s eyes. They argued back and forth, accusing each other of terrible things, of being unfit to be a parent. Frankie rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling, praying his half sister would have her way, trying to imagine a life without Papa. Polly was his friend. He was her shadow, her little shit-bag. She wouldn’t whip him with a leather belt or take a barber’s strop to the back of his legs. She wouldn’t lock him in a dark, cold basement and force him to sleep on the floor. For a few moments, Frankie could hope for a chance to live without constant fear of a backhand to his face. But Polly’s next words cut him deeply, more painful than any physical punishment Papa was capable of giving.

  “You’ll still have his brother. You won’t be alone. He can cook and clean for you. You can treat him like your little wife.”

  It wasn’t her horrible words and sneering voice, mocking him as more girl than boy, that wounded him. She was trying to steal the one thing in the world that belonged to him, the only thing he loved. She would leave him alone, without a mother or a brother, to live with a father who rarely spoke to him and then only to criticize and threaten him. The voices below grew louder as they shouted over each other, waking Michael, who ran to Frankie’s bed. He burrowed under the covers, clinging to his brother, his arms, strong as a little bull’s, around Frankie’s neck, nearly choking him.

  “I want Mama,” he cried, his voice muffled by Frankie’s chest.

  “Mama went to live with the angels.”

  “Where?”

  “Angels live in heaven.”

  “What’s heaven? When is she coming home?”

  “She has to stay with the angels. They’d be sad if she left them alone.”

  “Doesn’t she like us?”

  “She loves us, especially you. You’re her special boy.”

  “Are you going to go live with the angels, too, Boo?”

  “No. I’m going to stay with you, Mikey.”

  “Okay,” Michael said, easily comforted as only a child soon to be three could be. He fell asleep quickly, feeling safe in Frankie’s arms. Frankie would be bruised in the morning from Michael kicking his legs while he slept. Mama had said Michael would be as tall as a giant when he grew up, big and strong, but Frankie would always be older, someone his young brother would look up to. Papa and Polly could fight all night. He didn’t care who won the argument downstairs. He’d made a promise to his mother and no one would ever take Michael away from him.

  FRANKIE, CHRISTMAS 1969

  The morning of Christmas Eve was unseasonably warm, but Miss Eileen insisted on wrapping a wool scarf around Michael’s neck and stuffing his chubby hands into a pair of mittens.

  “It’s pneumonia weather, Frankie. Don’t argue with me today. Just bundle up so we can be on our way.”

  Frankie was nine and a half and too old to believe her dumb stories about disobedient boys who had caught their death from running around outdoors in the month of December with bare heads and their coats unbuttoned.

  “Tell me their names!” he demanded.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know them. They all lived in Holmesburg when I was a girl and they died long before you were born. Mikey, if I let go of your hand you have to promise not to run out into the street.”

  Frankie tried to act blasé, as if he couldn’t care less, but his heart began fluttering as soon as the Broad Street Woolworth’s was in sight.

  “You’re going to have to help me carry everything back. I only have two arms and need eyes in the back of my head to watch your brother.”

  Last-minute shoppers swarmed the aisles of the five-and-dime. Several women from the parish stopped Miss Eileen, trying to engage her in gossip, but she smiled and wished them a Merry Christmas, I guess I should say Buon Natale, and, pleading a million things left to do, shepherded her stepsons toward the boxes of ornaments.

  “You have to help me pick out what to buy, Frankie. Which of these do you like the best?”

  They were all beautiful to his awestruck eyes. He chose silver and red and green and gold shiny glass globes that would reflect the light of the colored tree lamps.

  “You don’t kno
w how lucky we are these days. When I was your age, the whole string would go dark when one bulb burned out.”

  She told them each to pick out one “special” ornament. Michael, of course, wanted a crudely molded Santa. Frankie chose a delicate glass snowflake. The only disappointment was settling for a star to top the tree because the angels were out of stock.

  “Next year,” Miss Eileen promised. “We’ll come the day after Thanksgiving and buy the biggest one in the store.”

  Sal Pinto was steadying a fragrant pine by the big window on Eighth Street when they arrived home. The greatest miracle of all had occurred. Papa had relented, giving in to his new wife’s pleas that it wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree. The immigrant from Calabria believed only the idiot medigan’ dragged a dead tree into their house. Every year there was a story in the paper about some crazy family that had been burned to a crisp after an electrical short caused the cursed fire hazard to burst into flames. In Papa’s household, the Birth of the Savior had always been observed by displaying the elaborate wood-and-terra-cotta presepe his mother had had shipped from Naples and by hanging a wreath on the barbershop door. The flame-haired woman had accomplished the impossible, though she couldn’t persuade her husband to actually walk to the corner to buy the tree and haul it up the stairs. Sal Pinto offered to string the lights, saying it was a man’s job, and teased Miss Eileen about showing him a few of the tricks she’d used to force the old goat to live in the twentieth century. She warned him about being fresh and told him to behave himself since that one, she said, nodding at Frankie, doesn’t miss a trick.

  She put Frankie in charge of decorating the tree and loaded a stack of holiday LPs—Perry Como and Bing Crosby, Nat “King” Cole and The Little Drummer Boy—on the hi-fi turntable. She announced that decorating was thirsty work and made cocoa, which Michael spilt on the floor, setting off a frantic rush to mop up the mess before Papa climbed the stairs after his last trim of the day.

  “Isn’t it beautiful, Lou?” she asked. “Frankie did it all by himself. All I did was hang the ornaments on the branches that were too high for him to reach.”

  Papa was ungracious in defeat.

  “No smoking in this room until that thing is out on the street where it belongs.”

  Papa and his bride squabbled when she pulled a casserole of macaroni and cheese from the oven to take to Sal Pinto’s Christmas Eve dinner.

  “For God’s sake, Lou, they’re little boys. You can’t expect them to eat that stuff. I can hardly look at it myself.”

  The smelly fish were the only bad part of Christmas. Miss Eileen slapped Sal Pinto’s hand at the dinner table, much to the pleasure of his beleaguered wife, for tormenting her stepson by dangling a greasy dead smelt inches from Frankie’s face.

  “She’s spoiling you, Francis,” Papa said as they walked to Saint Catherine’s, where Frankie was serving at Midnight Mass. Miss Eileen had taken Michael home with strict instructions from Papa to give him a spoonful of Benadryl if he was too excited about the visit from Saint Nicholas to sleep.

  On Christmas morning, Miss Eileen chased Michael with an Instamatic, taking pictures as he tore through the wrapping paper, barely taking time to look at one toy before moving on to the next. Frankie made a major haul of board games and model planes (he had no interest in aircraft, but loved the meticulous task of assembling the pieces) and an army of plastic Roman centurions. Miss Eileen raved about the drugstore perfume he’d selected when Papa warned he wouldn’t be able to sit for a week if he didn’t buy his mother a present.

  “How did you know Jean Naté is my favorite?” she gushed. “Mikey, that’s an outdoor toy! Not something to play with in the house!” she chided as Michael raced from room to room with his brand-new Little Red Wagon Radio Flyer.

  “Lou, you look like you’re going to meet the Queen of England!” she laughed when Papa came downstairs from dressing.

  The part in his hair was meticulous and his mustache freshly trimmed. He was wearing a three-piece suit and he’d spit-shined his black leather shoes. He was holding a fedora, perfectly blocked, in his hand.

  “Would you please put on an overcoat?” she pleaded, clucking over the risk he was willing to take with his health. “You’re as bad as the boys.”

  As president of the parish Holy Name Society, it was Papa’s solemn duty to dispatch the members of the confraternity to deliver generous cash gifts, raised by the Society’s monthly 50/50 raffles and weekly bingo games, to the widows and homebound invalids of the neighborhood. Most of the men would stumble home drunk to their Christmas feasts since it would be an insult to refuse to raise a toast with their grateful beneficiaries. Not Papa, of course. Frankie had never seen him get loud and silly like Sal Pinto and Pete Delvecchia after a few shots.

  “You’ll be home by three,” Miss Eileen reminded him. “Remember. You promised.”

  Papa had wanted to make his wife happy and reluctantly agreed to load the trunk of the Oldsmobile sedan with gifts and travel to the Holmesburg section of the city, no less foreign a destination than if Miss Eileen had suggested Marrakesh, to have Christmas dinner with her brother’s family. Frankie had heard his father speaking Italian with Sal Pinto on Christmas Eve (Sal Pinto, born in Philadelphia to immigrant parents, couldn’t sustain an entire conversation in the old tongue and frequently lapsed into English, his first language), expressing his disgust at the prospect of being served dry turkey and slimy yams by dry spitting on the floor.

  “Don’t let him get overheated,” he said, nodding at Michael, who was clambering to be set loose outdoors to take the Radio Flyer on a test run. “I bought that bastard Imperiale a new car with the doctor’s bills I’ve paid him this year.”

  The temperature had plunged overnight, falling more than forty degrees, well below the freezing point. Miss Eileen stood at the barbershop door, soliciting Frankie’s promise to walk slowly while pulling his brother in the wagon.

  “You boys be careful. That’s black ice on the sidewalk. You don’t want to spend Christmas in the emergency room.”

  Michael grew restless after two laps around the block and tried to climb out of the moving wagon. The Radio Flyer tipped, spilling him on the concrete. The thick cushion of his mittens protected the meaty flesh of his palms when he used his hands to break his fall. He escaped without cuts or bruises, but the shock of finding himself facedown on the sidewalk was reason enough for him to begin to wail.

  “Come on, Mikey. Stop crying. You’re not hurt,” Frankie reassured him as he lifted Michael to his feet.

  Neither of them saw the Radio Flyer drift down the sidewalk or knew that it had jumped the curb and rolled into the street until they heard the metallic crunch of it being crushed beneath the wheels of a baby-blue Cadillac. The driver jumped from the car and did a quick 360 around the vehicle, searching for damage.

  “You fucking kids are goddamn lucky that thing didn’t scratch my car or I’d break both of your scrawny necks,” he panted, even the slightest exertion being a strain on his corpulent body.

  He was the capo di tutti capi, a man who commanded such respect that Papa’s boisterous and argumentative customers fell silent, greeting him with deference born of fear, when he arrived at the shop for his weekly trim, take a little off the top and clean up the neck. A woman with heavy jowls and a short neck opened the car window, exhaling a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. She wore a ring on every finger and the white skunk strip in her kinky, long hair reminded Frankie of Cruella de Vil.

  “For Christ’s sake, Angelo, it’s Christmas. Stop torturing those poor boys.”

  The boss of bosses, chastised by his wife for being a Scrooge, gave Frankie a crisp ten-dollar bill and a lecture about the dangers of playing in the street. Michael, wary and frightened, as if the mangled wagon were a dangerous beast poised to attack, ran indoors, seeking the comfort of Miss Eileen’s arms and soothing words.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Tomorrow we’ll take the subway to Wanamaker’s and buy a new wa
gon. We won’t say anything when your father gets home. It’ll be our secret. Just the three of us. He’ll never know. Now come on, both of you. Stop frowning. Show me what handsome boys you are when you smile.”

  Papa was pleasantly surprised to learn Miss Eileen’s brother had married an Italian girl whose holiday lasagna was light as air and whose pizzelles were crisp and fragrant with anisette. His medigan’ in-law had developed a taste for Sambuca and insisted he and Papa share multiple toasts. It was almost midnight before Papa carried a sleeping Michael to the car.

  “No, honey. Sit up front with your father,” Miss Eileen told Frankie. “I’ll ride in the back with your brother.”

  “Don’t slam that door and wake him up, Francis. And put those cookies away before you get crumbs all over the seat,” Papa warned.

  He heard Michael stir and Miss Eileen quietly singing a carol to lull him back to sleep. Frankie hated her more at that moment than at any time since the day Papa brought her into their house. He and his brother had only each other after their mother died. Michael belonged to this stranger now and Frankie belonged to no one. He bit his lip, drawing blood, determined that no one see him cry.

  “It’s late, Francis,” Papa said when they arrived at Eighth and Carpenter. His youngest son was dead weight in his arms. “Don’t make me come back down these stairs to chase you to bed.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  He waited until he heard the tip-tap, click-clack of Miss Eileen’s heels on the creaking floorboards overhead. He acted quickly, snatching the glass snowflake from the tree, and wrapped it in his scarf. In the morning, he hid it in the deep pocket of his toggle coat and smashed it on the sidewalk on his way to church to serve at morning Mass.

  FRANKIE AND MICHAEL, 1970–1973

  The promise of a few hours away from the critical eye of Papa, no one snapping at him or threatening him with the open palm of his hand, sustained Frankie throughout the week. He was still too young to be trusted alone at home with Mikey when Papa and Miss Eileen went dancing at Palumbo’s on Saturday night. It was Father Parisi who made the suggestion. It’s not a problem at all. It’s an early night for me anyway, just putting the finishing touches on my sermon, a glass of wine and bed. It’ll be fun. Don’t worry about feeding them. The housekeeper always makes a pot of gravy. We’ll watch a little television. They’ll keep me out of trouble. He winked at Frankie as if they had a secret conspiracy to stay up all night drinking Pepsi and playing Parcheesi. Why don’t the boys just stay overnight? Frankie can serve at eight o’clock Mass.