Last Night in Twisted River

  "I trust Ketchum," his father had answered. "If anything ever happens to me, Daniel, you trust him, too."

  Danny realized that he must have crept back upstairs to his bedroom, and fallen asleep, when he smelled the lamb hash in addition to all the baking; he'd not been aware of his dad opening the difficult outer door to the cookhouse kitchen and getting the ground lamb from the cooler. The boy lay in his bed with his eyes still closed, savoring all the smells. He wanted to ask Ketchum if his mom had been faceup in the water when he'd first spotted her, or if he'd found her in the spillway facedown.

  Danny got dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen; only then did he realize that his father had found the time to come upstairs and get dressed, probably after Ketchum had passed out on the cot. Dan watched his dad working at the stove; when the cook was concentrating on three or four tasks that were all in close proximity to one another, his limp was almost undetectable. At such moments, Danny could imagine his father at the age of twelve--before the ankle accident. At twelve, Danny Baciagalupo was a lonely kid; he had no friends. He often wished that he could have known his dad when they were both twelve-year-olds.

  WHEN YOU'RE TWELVE, four years seems like a long time. Annunziata Saetta knew that it wouldn't take her little Dom's ankle four years to heal; Nunzi's beloved Kiss of the Wolf was off the crutches in four months, and he was reading as well as any fifteen-year-old by the time he was only thirteen. The homeschooling worked. In the first place, Annunziata was an elementary-school teacher; she knew how much of the school day was wasted on discipline, recess, and snacks. The boy did his homework, and double-checked it, during what amounted to Nunzi's school day; Dominic had time for lots of extra reading, and he kept a journal of the recipes he was learning, too.

  The boy's cooking skills were more slowly acquired, and--after the accident--Annunziata made her own child-labor laws. She would not permit young Dominic to go off to work at a breakfast place in Berlin until the boy really knew his way around a kitchen, and he had to wait until he'd turned sixteen; in those four years, Dom became an extremely well-read sixteen-year-old, and an accomplished cook, who was less experienced at shaving than he was at walking with a limp.

  It was 1940 when Dominic Baciagalupo met Danny's mom. She was a twenty-three-year-old teaching in the same elementary school as Annunziata Saetta; in fact, the cook's mother introduced her sixteen-year-old son to the new teacher.

  Nunzi had no choice in the matter. Her cousin Maria, another Saetta, had married a Calogero--a common Sicilian surname. "After some Greek saint who died there--the name has something to do with children in general, I think, or maybe orphans in particular," Nunzi had explained to Dominic. She pronounced the name cah-LOH-ger-roh. It was used as a first name, too, his mother explained--"frequently for bastards."

  At sixteen, Dominic was sensitive to the subject of illegitimacy--not that Annunziata wasn't. Her cousin had sent her pregnant daughter away to the wilds of New Hampshire, bemoaning the fact that the daughter was the first woman in the Calogero family to have graduated from college. "It was only a teachers' college, and a lot of good it did her--she still got knocked up!" the poor girl's mother told Nunzi, who repeated this insensitivity to Dom. The boy understood without further detail that the pregnant twenty-three-year-old was being sent to them because Annunziata and her bastard were considered in the same boat. Her name was Rosina, but--given Nunzi's fondness for abbreviations--the banished girl was already a Rosie before she made the trip from Boston to Berlin.

  As was often the way "back then"--not only in the North End, and by no means limited to Italian or Catholic families--the Saettas and the Calogeros were sending one family scandal to live with another. Thus Annunziata was given a reason to resent her Boston relatives twice. "Let this be a lesson to you, Dom," the teenager's mother told him. "We are not going to judge poor Rosie for her unfortunate condition--we are going to love her, like nothing was the matter."

  While Annunziata should be commended for her spirit of forgiveness--especially in 1940, when unwed mothers could generally be counted among America's most unforgiven souls--it was both reckless and unnecessary to tell her sixteen-year-old son that he was going to love his second cousin "like nothing was the matter."

  "Why is she my second cousin?" the boy asked his mom.

  "Maybe that's not what she is--maybe she's called your cousin once-removed, or something," Nunzi said. When Dominic looked confused, his mother said: "Whatever she's called, she's not really your cousin--not a first cousin, anyway."

  This information (or misinformation) posed an unknown danger to a crippled sixteen-year-old boy. His accident, his rehabilitation, his homeschooling, not to mention his reinvention as a cook--all these--had deprived him of friends his own age. And "little" Dom had a fulltime job; he already saw himself as a young man. Now Nunzi had told him that the twenty-three-year-old Rosie Calogero was "not really" his cousin.

  As for Rosie, when she arrived, she was not yet "showing;" that she soon would be posed another problem.

  Rosie had a B.S. in education from the teachers' college; at that time, frankly, she was overqualified to teach at a Berlin elementary school. But when the young woman started to look pregnant, she would need to temporarily quit her job. "Or else we'll have to come up with a husband for you, either real or imaginary," Annunziata told her. Rosie was certainly pretty enough to find a husband, a real one--Dominic thought she was absolutely beautiful--but the poor girl wasn't about to sally forth on the requisite social adventures necessary for meeting available young men, not when she was expecting!

  FOR FOUR YEARS, the boy had cooked with his mother. In some ways, because he wrote every recipe down--not to mention each variation of the recipes he would make, occasionally, without her--he was surpassing her, even as he learned. As it happened, on that life-changing night, Dominic was making dinner for the two women and himself. He was on his way to becoming famous at the breakfast place in Berlin, and he got home from work well before Rosie and his mom came home from school; except on weekends, when Nunzi liked to cook, Dominic was becoming the principal cook in their small household. Stirring his marinara sauce, he said: "Well, I could marry Rosie, or I could pretend to be her husband--until she finds someone more suitable. I mean, who needs to know?"

  To Annunziata, it seemed like such a sweet and innocent offer; she laughed and gave her son a hug. But young Dom couldn't imagine anyone "more suitable" for Rosie than himself--he had been faking the pretend part. He would have married Rosie for real; the difference in their ages, or that they were vaguely related, was no stumbling block for him.

  As for Rosie, it didn't matter that the sixteen-year-old's proposal, which was both sweet and not-so-innocent, was unrealistic--and probably illegal, even in northern New Hampshire. What affected the poor girl, who was still in the first trimester of her pregnancy, was that the lout who'd knocked her up had not offered to marry her--not even under what had amounted to considerable duress.

  Given the predilections of the male members of both the Saetta and Calogero families, this "duress" took the form of multiple threats of castration ending with death by drowning. Whether it was Naples or Palermo the lout sailed back to was not made clear, but no marriage proposal was ever forthcoming. Dominic's spontaneous and heartfelt offer was the first time anyone had proposed to Rosie; overcome, she burst into tears at the kitchen table before Dominic could poach the shrimp in his marinara sauce. Sobbing, the distraught young woman went to bed without her dinner.

  In the night, Annunziata awoke to the confusing sounds of Rosie's miscarriage--"confusing" because, at that moment, Nunzi didn't know if the loss of the baby was a blessing or a curse. Dominic Baciagalupo lay in his bed, listening to his second or once-removed cousin crying. The toilet kept flushing, the bathtub was filling--there must have been blood--and, over it all, came the sympathetic crooning of his mother's most consoling voice. "Rosie, maybe it's better this way. Now you don't need to quit your job--not even temporarily! Now we
don't have to come up with a husband for you--not a real one or the imaginary kind! Listen to me, Rosie--it wasn't a baby, not yet."

  But Dominic lay wondering, What have I done? Even an imaginary marriage to Rosie gave the boy a nearly constant erection. (Well, he was sixteen years old--no wonder!) When he heard that Rosie had stopped crying, young Dom held his breath. "Did Dominic hear me--did I wake him up, do you think?" the boy heard the girl ask his mother.

  "Well, he sleeps like the dead," Nunzi said, "but you did make quite a ruckus--understandably, of course."

  "He must have heard me!" the girl cried. "I have to talk to him!" she said. Dominic could hear her step out of the tub. There was the vigorous rubbing of a towel, and the sound of her bare feet on the bathroom floor.

  "I can explain to Dom in the morning," his mother was saying, but his not-really-a-cousin's bare feet were already padding down the hall to the spare room.

  "No! I have something to tell him!" Rosie called. Dominic could hear a drawer open; a coat hanger fell in her closet. Then the girl was in his room--she just opened his door, without knocking, and lay down on the bed beside him. He could feel her wet hair touch his face.

  "I heard you," he told her.

  "I'm going to be fine," Rosie began. "I'll have a baby, some other day."

  "Does it hurt?" he asked her. He kept his face turned away from her on the pillow, because he had brushed his teeth too long ago--he was afraid his breath was bad.

  "I didn't think I wanted the baby until I lost it," Rosie was saying. He couldn't think of what to say, but she went on. "What you said to me, Dominic, was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me--I'll never forget it."

  "I would marry you, you know--I wasn't just saying it," the boy said.

  She hugged him and kissed his ear. She was on top of the covers, and he was under them, but he could still feel her body pressing against his back. "I'll never have a nicer offer--I know it," his not-really-a-cousin said.

  "Maybe we could get married when I'm a little older," Dominic suggested.

  "Maybe we will!" the girl cried, hugging him again.

  Did she mean it, the sixteen-year-old wondered, or was she just being nice?

  From the bathroom, where Annunziata was draining and scrubbing the tub, their voices were audible but indistinct. What surprised Nunzi was that Dominic was talking; the boy rarely spoke. His voice was still changing--it was getting lower. But from the moment Annunziata had heard Rosie say, "Maybe we will!"--well, Dominic began to talk and talk, and the girl's interjections grew fainter but lengthier. What they said was indecipherable, but they were whispering as breathlessly as lovers.

  As she went on compulsively cleaning the bathtub, Annunziata no longer wondered if the miscarriage had been a blessing or a curse; the miscarriage was no longer the point. It was Rosie Calogero herself--was she a blessing or a curse? What had Nunzi been thinking? She'd opened her house to a pretty, intelligent (and clearly emotional) young woman--one who'd been rejected by her lover and banished from home by her family--without realizing what an irresistible temptation the twenty-three-year-old would be for a lonely boy coming of age.

  Annunziata got off her knees in the bathroom and went down the hall to the kitchen, noting that the door to her son's bedroom was partially open and the whispering went on and on. In the kitchen, Nunzi took a pinch of salt and threw it over her shoulder. She resisted the impulse to intrude on the two of them, but--first stepping back into the hall--she raised her voice.

  "My goodness, Rosie, you must forgive me," Annunziata announced. "I never even asked you if you wanted to go back to Boston!" Nunzi had tried to make this not appear to be her idea; she'd attempted a neutral or indifferent tone, as if she were speaking strictly out of consideration for what Rosie herself wanted to do. But the murmuring from Dominic's bedroom was broken by a sudden, shared intake of breath.

  Rosie felt the boy gasp against her chest the second she was aware of her own gasp. It was as if they had rehearsed the answer, so perfectly in unison was their response. "No!" Annunziata heard her son and Rosie cry; they were a chorus.

  Definitely not a blessing, Nunzi was thinking, when she heard Rosie say, "I want to stay here, with you and Dominic. I want to teach at the school. I don't ever want to go back to Boston!" (I can't blame her for that, Annunziata realized; she knew the feeling.)

  "I want Rosie to stay!" Nunzi heard her son call out.

  Well, of course you do! Annunziata thought. But what would the repercussions of the difference in their ages be? And what would happen if and when the country went to war, and all the young men went? (But not her beloved Kiss of the Wolf--not with a limp like that, Nunzi knew.)

  ROSIE CALOGERO KEPT her job and did it well. The young cook also kept his job and did it well--well enough that the breakfast place started serving lunch, too. In a short time, Dominic Baciagalupo became a much better cook than his mom. And whatever the young cook made for lunch, he brought the best of it home for dinner; he fed his mother and his not-really-a-cousin very well. On occasion, mother and son would still cook together, but on most culinary matters, Annunziata yielded to Dominic.

  He made meat loaf with Worcestershire sauce and provolone, and served it warm with his multipurpose marinara sauce--or cold, with applesauce. He did breaded chicken cutlets alla parmigiana; in Boston, his mother had told him, she'd made veal Parmesan, but in Berlin he couldn't get good veal. (He substituted pork for veal--it was almost as good.) Dominic made eggplant Parmesan, too--the sizable contingent of French Canadians in Berlin knew what aubergine was. And Dom did a leg of lamb with lemon and garlic and olive oil; the olive oil came from a shop Nunzi knew in Boston, and Dominic used it to rub roast chicken or baste turkey, both of which he stuffed with cornbread and sausage and sage. He did steaks under the broiler, or he grilled the steaks, which he served with white beans or roasted potatoes. But he didn't much care for potatoes, and he loathed rice. He served most of his main dishes with pasta, which he did very simply--with olive oil and garlic, and sometimes with peas or asparagus. He cooked carrots in olive oil with black Sicilian olives, and more garlic. And although he detested baked beans, Dominic would serve them; there were lumbermen and mill workers, mostly old-timers who'd lost their teeth, who ate little else. ("The baked beans and pea soup crowd," Nunzi called them disparagingly.)

  Occasionally, Annunziata could get fennel, which she and Dom cooked in a sweet tomato sauce with sardines; the sardines came in cans from another shop Nunzi knew in Boston, and mother and son mashed them to a paste in garlic and olive oil, and served them with pasta topped with bread crumbs, and browned in the oven. Dominic made his own pizza dough. He served meatless pizzas every Friday night--in lieu of fish, which neither the young cook nor his mom trusted was fresh enough in the north country. Shrimp, frozen in chunks of ice the size of cinder blocks, arrived unthawed in trains from the coast; hence Dominic trusted the shrimp. And the pizzas made more use of his beloved marinara sauce. The ricotta, Romano, Parmesan, and provolone cheese all came from Boston--as did the black Sicilian olives. The cook, who was still learning his craft, chopped a lot of parsley and put it on everything--even on the ubiquitous pea soup. (Parsley was "pure chlorophyll," his mother had told him; it offset garlic and freshened your breath.)

  Dominic kept his desserts simple, and--to Nunzi's vexation--there was nothing remotely Sicilian about them: apple pie, and blueberry cobbler or johnnycake. In Coos County, you could always get apples and blueberries, and Dominic was good with dough.

  His breakfasts were even more basic--eggs and bacon, pancakes and French toast, corn muffins and blueberry muffins and scones. In those days, he would make banana bread only when the bananas had turned brown; it was wasteful to use good bananas, his mother had told him.

  There was a turkey farm in the Androscoggin Valley, roughly between Berlin and Milan, and the cook made turkey hash with peppers and onions--and a minimal amount of potatoes. "Corned beef isn't fit for hash--it must be Irish!" Annunziata had le
ctured to him.

  That alcoholic asshole Uncle Umberto, who would drink himself to death before the war was over, never ate a meal cooked by his not-really-a-nephew. The veteran lumberman could scarcely tolerate being a foreman to the ever-increasing numbers of female mill workers, and the women refused to tolerate Umberto at all, which only served to exacerbate the troubled foreman's drinking. (Minor character or not, Umberto would haunt Dominic's memory, where the not-really-an-uncle played a major role. How had Dominic's father been Umberto's friend? And did Umberto dislike Nunzi because she wouldn't sleep with him? Given his mother's banishment from Boston, and her situation in Berlin, Dominic would often torture himself with the thought that Umberto had wrongly imagined Nunzi might be rather easily seduced.) And one winter month, some years ahead of Asshole Umberto's demise, Annunziata Saetta caught the same flu all the schoolchildren had; Nunzi died before the United States had officially entered the war.

  What were Rosie Calogero and young Dom to do? They were twenty-four and seventeen, respectively; they couldn't very well live together in the same house, not after Dominic's mother died. Nor could they tolerate living apart--hence the not-quite-cousins had a quandary on their hands. Not even Nunzi could tell them what to do, not anymore; the young woman and noticeably younger man only did what they thought poor Annunziata would have wanted, and maybe she would have.

  Young Dom simply lied about his age. He and his (not-really-a) cousin Rosie Calogero were married in mud season, 1941--just before the first big log drives of that year on the Androscoggin, north of Berlin. They were a successful, if not prosperous, young cook and a successful, though not prosperous, schoolteacher. At least their work wasn't transient, and what need did they have to be prosperous? They were both (in their different ways) young and in love, and they wanted only one child--just one--and, in March 1942, they would have him.

  Young Dan was born in Berlin--"just before mud season," as his father always put it (mud season being more definitive than the calendar)--and almost immediately upon his birth, the boy's hardworking parents moved away from the mill town. To the cook's sensibilities, the stench of the paper mill was a constant insult. It seemed plausible to believe that one day the war would be over, and when it was, Berlin would grow bigger--beyond all recognition, except for the smell. But in 1942, the town was already too big and too fetid--and too full of mixed memories--for Dominic Baciagalupo. And Rosie's prior experience in the North End had made her wary of moving back to Boston, although both the Saetta and Calogero families entreated the young cousins to come "home."