The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  “It’s Michael, please,” he says, handing the fellow his card. “I’d like that.”

  “Mrs. Gagliano, too,” Officer Scalzo insists. “It would be an honor.”

  “Sounds great,” he lies, hoping the invitation is nothing more than a polite formality, but fearing it isn’t.

  Yes, it sounds terrific. Three or four hours of uncomfortable tension. Kit, well bred to a fault, will praise her hostess’s accomplishments in the kitchen while trying to avoid actually swallowing more than a forkful of the food on her plate. She’s mastered the art of discreetly not eating. Mrs. Scalzo, solidly built, will compliment Kit’s figure, self-conscious of every bite she takes in her guest’s regal presence. After a few Crown Royals, Officer Scalzo will feel at ease; made wise by a lifetime of defending the streets of the city from the scum of the earth, he’ll share the insights he’s learned about those people. On the drive home, Michael and his high-born Episcopal wife will agree that the Scalzos are the salt of the earth, up every morning at five, out of the house by six, in bed by ten. Michael will defend their unenlightened attitudes, blaming the lack of opportunities taken for granted by the privileged sons and daughters of Chester County. Kit will strongly disagree, arguing that people can rise above their circumstances, citing the shining example of her husband, son of a South Philly barber, raised in a cauldron of ignorance and prejudice, an inspiration and role model for the Scalzos’ fortunate young son as he embarks on his own journey through the land of golden opportunity.

  MARCH 9, 2008

  Michael is ready to concede defeat and trot back to the car, but the rusty hinges of the front door finally yield to Kit’s efforts and there’s no retreating now. He has no choice but to meekly follow his wife.

  A yapping mongrel, the Beast from Hell, comes charging down the hallway, its unclipped toenails clattering against the hardwood floors. Half blind and completely crazed, it crashes into his ankles with a force that would break a mortal canine’s neck. But the demon dog merely rolls on its back and springs to its feet, howling in defiance, its bloodshot eyes full of fury, baring every one of its broken, haphazard teeth.

  “Oh my dears, what have you done to upset poor Daisy Mae?”

  The voice calling from a distant room is clear and strong, as prosecutorial as Michael during a closing argument, accusing her guests sight unseen of heinous acts of animal cruelty.

  “It’s Katherine and Michael, Miss Peterson,” Kit shouts, enunciating every word clearly since the old woman’s eardrums are not nearly as well preserved as her vocal cords. “I’m so sorry we’re late.”

  “I’d given up on you! I thought you’d abandoned me.”

  “Just give us a minute,” Kit calls back. “I told you there’d be hell to pay,” she whispers to her husband.

  “You could have come without me.”

  “I don’t ask much of you, Michael.”

  She’s right. She doesn’t, but she insists he accompany her on these biweekly pilgrimages. His fearless wife is easily intimidated by this snake of an old lady.

  “I brought some things that need to go in the refrigerator, Miss P,” she hollers. “I’ll be in the kitchen, but Michael’s going to bring you an aperitif.”

  He trudges down the long hallway to the sunroom, his footsteps raising a cloud of ambient dust, a glass of cheap jug sherry, thick and sweet as syrup, in hand. The panorama outside the ancient panels of thin, brittle, mud-streaked glass is magnificent—rolling, gentle hills and lively streams and thick copses of bare hardwood trees. From this privileged vantage point, the Brandywine Valley, splendid in every season, even the gray, wet days of early March, seems to exist for Miss Peterson’s exclusive pleasure. Random crocuses peek through the last lingering patches of unblemished snow. A quick red flash—a fox, most likely—streaks through the boxwood hedge. He remembers his first sojourn into Chester County and this sepia-tinted Wyeth landscape of weathered barns and winter fields. His destination was Highbrook, the Morris family seat, no street address necessary, an imposing sixteen-room stone pile at the end of a long, meandering private road through property the maternal line of the woman who would one day be his wife had owned for nearly two centuries.

  “Oh, Daisy Mae, you naughty girl, come here,” Miss Peterson insists, reaching to gather up the dog. Michael, of course, is ignored.

  “Hello, Eleanor,” he greets her, managing to suppress the instinct to kneel in her royal presence.

  “Oh, Michael, so good to see you,” she says, entirely insincere. She shifts in her chair and allows him to offer a chaste kiss. She doesn’t bother to conceal her irritation at being distracted from the sonorous proclamations of the smug, overstuffed bratwurst moderator as he introduces the combatants on Meet the Press.

  Eleanor Peterson will be one hundred years old next month. Her training as a ballerina is still apparent in her carriage. Grace and agility long ago deserted her joints and muscles, but she moves with the speed and determination of a much younger woman. Her arrogance and narcissism and almost sinful pride are undiminished more than six decades after her final curtain call. And her conviction in her own immortality remains unshaken even as she refuses to acknowledge the persistent signs of frailty such as memory lapses and frequent bouts of incontinence. More and more, her world is confined to this Prairie Style mausoleum, the folly of a second-rate architect and disciple of Wright.

  “My dear, what have you been eating?” she asks as Kit enters the room.

  Formalities like polite salutations aren’t necessary when you share a bond as long as theirs. Honesty is valued above any reticence over causing bruised feelings. Directness is a virtue. Miss Peterson’s hypercritical eye observes what the black leggings and cashmere turtleneck, the native costume of a Parisian waif, so expertly camouflage. Kit is putting on weight. A whole pound. Possibly two!

  “I know, I know,” his wife confesses, abashed. “I’m barely eating anything and I can’t lose this extra baggage.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to be more careful now that you’re approaching the change,” Miss Peterson warns.

  “I’ve got years until that happens!” Kit protests. “My mother didn’t start menopause until she was fifty-six!”

  “Well, my dear, I couldn’t wait for it to start. All that fuss and bother and bloating once a month.”

  The very thought of it disgusts her. She pinches her lips and frowns, not amused by the memory of bulky belts and napkins. “This sherry is absolutely delightful!” she exclaims, polishing off her drink in three swift draws.

  “Michael, why don’t you get Miss P another glass.”

  Gladly. He’d do anything for the briefest respite from the carping and barbed insults. He walks back to the kitchen, the vintage fifties appliances still in working order. Michael fishes around the deep recesses of Miss P’s refrigerator, a brave and desperate act. Christ only knows what he might find in here . . . fossilized vegetables, cheese rind penicillin, the Lindbergh baby. It’s not even noon, but he’s earned a beer for agreeing to spend Sunday morning with Miss P. He doesn’t care if it was bottled before Prohibition. He’s going to need to build a small buzz if they’re going to make it through the visit without him breaking the old bitch’s neck. He finds an ancient can of Miller High Life, vintage unknown, buried deep in the recesses of the antique Philco, and plops down on a chair. He pulls out his cell and dials a number with a Western Pennsylvania area code. Even enduring a few moments of his half sister Polly’s monosyllabic, caustic remarks is preferable to returning to the sunroom to suffer through the interminable running commentary of an ancient, virginal narcissist.

  “She’s sleeping,” Polly’s step-granddaughter informs him. “I’ll wake her up.”

  “No. Let her sleep. How’s she doing?”

  “The same,” the young woman answers. “She’s as mean as ever.”

  “Tell her to call Frankie today. It’s his birthday.”

  “Does she have his number?”

  “Repeat it to me,�
� he insists after giving her Frankie’s cell, suspecting the little brat couldn’t be bothered to write it down. “Make sure she calls him.”

  “I will. I will,” she insists, before hanging up.

  He leans back and exhales, staring out the kitchen window. He wonders who’s going to inherit this acreage after the old girl finally croaks. (Then, of course, he’s been wondering that ever since his first visit to the Shrine of Terpsichore all those many years ago when he was naïve enough to think the reading of the will was imminent.) Miss Peterson grew up on the property, returning after her “triumph” in New York. She’s lived here ever since, supplementing the monthly sums from a trust fund with private lessons for little girls with dreams of tutus and footlights and Prince Charmings in tights, including one aspiring ballerina named Katherine Morris Scott. The closest Kit ever got to a grand career on the stage were the recitals scheduled to demonstrate the progress of the aspiring prima ballerinas to their check-writing parents. None of them, Michael’s future wife included, ever displayed any promise of becoming the next Dame Margot Fonteyn, but Miss Peterson’s influence has been profound, her protégés distinguished by their lifelong devotion to the classical ballet, their morbid obsession with their caloric intake and the bathroom scale, and their ability to sneak up and catch their husbands red-handed, a benefit of all those years prancing about en pointe.

  “Michael, why are you sitting in here alone getting drunk before lunch?”

  “I’m hardly getting drunk on half a can of beer.”

  “God, she’s in a foul mood today. You can’t leave me alone with her in there.”

  “What’s she complaining about now?”

  “She’s on a tirade about Obama. She thinks he’s being fawned over because he’s black. Come on, fifteen more minutes. That’s all I’m asking. We have to get home and make sure everything is under control. I don’t want the entire neighborhood showing up and have nothing to offer but a bag of Oreos.”

  They could have bought a warehouse of Oreos with the money they’re paying for the spread being prepared for their guests. “Life Is Sweet,” the coyly named caterer renowned for its baked goods and sugary confections, is perfectly capable of preparing a dessert buffet for forty guests without any interference from the woman paying the bill. The hypercritical subscribers of Main Line Life have voted its services the best in the western suburbs six years in a row. But, for once, he’s grateful for his wife’s conviction that, no matter the task at hand, it can only be performed correctly under her strict supervision. The usual two-hour biweekly pilgrimage to the Shrine is being cut to sixty minutes.

  “Have you talked to your brother this morning?”

  “He didn’t pick up the phone. He was probably at Mass. I’ll call again a little later.”

  “I left him a message yesterday reminding him about the open house tonight. I feel like we’ve abandoned him on his birthday. The caterer did a beautiful job with his cake. It’ll be a shame if he doesn’t show.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kit. You didn’t tell him he could bring that little wetback, did you? We agreed on that one at least, didn’t we?” he asks, suddenly suspicious.

  “Charming, Michael. I see you really took the lessons of your diversity training to heart.”

  “I think I prefer the company in the other room,” he says, only half joking, as he stands up, a half-drunk beer in one hand and a cream sherry refill in the other.

  All Frankie wants for his birthday is twenty-four hours of serenity. At least he was spared an argument this morning. He can’t fight with himself and Mariano hasn’t been home for two days. These suspicious disappearances are getting to be routine. The first time Mariano stayed out all night, Frankie had panicked. He’d paced the floors until dawn, certain the boy was lying in a gutter, bloodied and broken. He’d been too relieved to be angry when Mariano walked through the door, more than twenty-four hours after having gone missing, looking like he hadn’t slept. He’d claimed he’d gone to Baltimore to see his brother and missed the last train back; he couldn’t call because he’d forgotten to take a charger for his phone. Now he doesn’t even bother with excuses for his vanishing acts. Weeks will go by without incident, then Mariano will receive a phone call and disappear, often without even saying good-bye. If he’s not back by midnight, Frankie will pop an Ambien and succumb to pharmaceutically induced sleep. Mariano’s usually exhausted when he returns, but occasionally he comes back jacked, wired, flying into a rage if Frankie has the temerity to ask where he’s been.

  He’s trying to be an indulgent husband. He’d sworn he’d never be a doormat again after Charlie Haldermann died, but a man pushing fifty can’t expect fidelity if he takes up with a boy with raging hormones and the energy to fuck two or three times a day. But today is his birthday, for Christ’s sake, and he shouldn’t be sitting alone in his usual pew trying not to doze off during Jack’s uninspiring sermon on the path to salvation. The service seems interminable. His knees are creaking and his back aches and he wants to shout hallelujah when Jack announces the Mass is ended, Go in Peace. They have sixth row, center orchestra seats at the Academy for the matinee performance of Le Nozze di Figaro. But Jack has two baptisms after his last Mass and they’ll have to rush to make the three o’clock curtain. Frankie decides he may as well use the time to run a few errands. He has prescriptions to pick up and needs a few groceries for the week.

  “Happy birthday, Mr. Gagliano!”

  The pretty young Cambodian pharmacist laughs as he hands Frankie a refill of his Lipitor and Niaspan.

  “Don’t look so surprised. Your birth date is in our records,” he says cheerfully. “Doing anything special?”

  “I’m too old to celebrate birthdays,” he says, trying, unsuccessfully, to sound like a grumpy curmudgeon.

  “I know how old you are and you’re not old!”

  The kid is actually flirting with him. Frankie’s astonished by the effect he still has on people. He’s been told all his life how good-looking he is. Handsome. Striking. Drop dead gorgeous. But he’s never quite believed it. He looks in the mirror and all he sees is an aging man with a beak of a nose that seems to grow more prominent with each passing year.

  “Well, I hope you’ve got better plans for your birthday than hanging around here, waiting for your prescription to be filled!”

  “Actually, I spent the best birthday of my life right here,” he says to the confused young pharmacist, remembering a magical evening at the famous South Philadelphia nightclub that occupied this site before the series of devastating fires, accidental or otherwise, unleashed an army of arson investigators and claims adjusters.

  Leaving the drugstore, he stops at the grocery to pick up a can of San Marzano tomatoes, leaving him with hours to kill. It’s a soggy, ugly day. The sky’s a dull steel gray, overcast with lingering clouds from last night’s heavy rainstorms. The wet paper trash littering the streets—napkins and wrappers and dirty paper plates—sticks to the soles of his shoes. The venerable Ninth Street outdoor curb market of sidewalk stalls and cramped and weathered shops smells like garbage, flavored with a tangy spritz of cat piss. It’s a pale shadow of its storied past when the street bustled with short-tempered vendors and obstinate housewives haggling over prices in a symphony of dialects—Calabrese, Abruzzese, Sicilian, and Neapolitan. Now it’s Vietnamese hawking half-rotten vegetables and Mexican mom-and-pops stocked with industrial-size cans of refried beans. There’s a half-dozen boarded-up storefronts on every block. A few upscale purveyors of artisanal cheeses and luxury-grade olive oils survive by selling their wares to the medigan’ who descend on the neighborhood for weekend field trips, but the butchers who sold Papa’s wives beautiful filets and crown roasts have fled to Jersey and the meat counters are piled high with chicken necks and cheap, fatty cuts of pork. You can still get decent antipasti and butter cookies if you know where to go. Frankie stops to admire the Easter decorations in the bakery window. The yellow and lavender straw and pastel plastic eggs are
a welcome splash of color, promising springtime on a dreary late-winter day. He stops in to place his order for marzipan Paschal Lambs for the Easter baskets and decides to treat himself to a cannoli. You only have one birthday a year. The baker’s wife insists he buy a half dozen. She’ll make a deal, six for the price of five.

  He makes a spur-of-the-moment decision and, instead of going home, turns left at his block toward the Ninth Street Merchants Alliance Leisure Timers “clubhouse.” The “boys,” the youngest in their mid-seventies and more than a few over eighty, will appreciate a box of cannoli, and spending an hour or two listening to a bunch of cantankerous old men bitch and moan will at least be more cheerful than sitting in his house alone. The goats have been here since early Mass; the ones who are married are hiding from their nagging wives; the widowers are hoping they’ll be extended a last-minute invitation for Sunday dinner.

  “Francis, what do you make of all this? We got to choose between a woman and a colored guy,” Albert Costellano asks as Frankie breezes through the door.

  The “clubhouse” is an old storefront stripped down to a few card tables and a couple of cast-off easy chairs. The dues are ten bucks a month, which covers the heating oil bill with enough left in the kitty for a few cans of Maxwell House and a jar of powdered nondairy creamer. Generous offspring pay the rent and the monthly cable charge for the enormous high-definition flat-screen television, a gift from Francis Rocco Gagliano to honor his late father, Luigi. It’s usually tuned to a ball game, played at an ear-piercing volume, but today they’re cheering the governor of the Commonwealth, who’s sparring an Obama-loving senator on Meet the Press. The governor is disparaging the junior senator from Illinois as inexperienced, a lightweight, a cream puff who’ll melt in the heat of action and burst into tears if a terrorist says boo.

  “He looks like a fairy,” Patsy Cipriani announces. “No offense, Francis. You know what I mean.”