“Why don’t you set them there,” Maria said, pointing to a small kitchen table. Then she looked at the blond-haired boy peeking out from behind his big sister’s skirt.
“Well, hi there, Tony,” she said. Looking at Sara, she smiled warmly. “Would you two like to stay for some cookies and maybe I could bring out some paper and colorful pencils?”
Sara was thrilled with the idea, and for the rest of the morning the children stayed at the Fiona house visiting with Maria. Just before they left to go home, Tony walked up to Maria and stared at her protruding stomach. Maria smiled and tentatively Tony reached up, touching her gently with his pudgy hand.
“Ball?” he asked.
Maria laughed and her cheeks grew red. “No, it’s not a ball. It’s a baby. I have a baby inside my tummy.”
The child’s eyes grew wide. “Baby? Inside you?” he asked.
“Yes.” Maria held his hand and moved it over her taut midsection. “It’s okay to touch it. Maybe you’ll feel my baby kicking.”
Tony left his hand on Maria and continued to stare at her abdomen. “Love baby,” he said softly. “My baby.”
Maria smiled again. “No, sweetie. It’s my baby. But when it’s born you can be his or her friend. Okay?”
Tony seemed satisfied with the answer and nodded. Then he leaned over and kissed Maria’s stomach before skipping away with his sister.
After that, the children returned every morning, and Maria was happy to have the company. Her husband was a shoemaker, and she was often lonely while he kept long hours at the shop. She enjoyed visiting with the Cannucci children and was especially taken by Tony. Each time the boy visited, he was enthralled with Maria’s pregnant body. He would pat Maria’s stomach and stare at her, even resting his head on her. Sometimes the child would feel the baby kick and he would squeal in delight.
“I don’t understand it,” Sara said, looking strangely at her brother. “Tony has been around other pregnant mothers. We know many pregnant women, even now, and he never made this sort of fuss over them.”
“Maybe they’re going to be special friends,” Maria said, patting Tony’s golden hair as he laid his head on her stomach.
Tony talked constantly about holding the baby, even though he did not understand how the infant was going to come out of Maria’s stomach. Then one day Maria went to the hospital, and four days later she returned home with a tiny wrapped bundle in her arms.
“His name is Sal,” Maria said, stooping low so that Tony could see the baby.
The older child was enthralled by the baby’s tiny hands and feet and the miniature face. “My baby?” he asked Maria once again.
“Your friend, Tony. Baby Sal is your friend.”
Sara smiled as she watched the exchange and wondered what would happen as the years passed, whether Baby Sal and Tony really would become friends.
But only two months later the Cannucci family moved away to be closer to the butcher shop where Tony Senior worked. For weeks afterward Tony spoke of Baby Sal and seemed sad that he had moved. But as winter arrived, the child discovered other things that captured his attention and he forgot about the tiny baby. And the years passed.
Two years after Tony graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to Panama for two years. There he and his fellow soldiers were exposed to the systemic herbicide Agent Orange, which the Army used as a defoliant in areas where troops were stationed. Oftentimes Tony and the other young men in his division would get violently ill and have to spend days in the infirmary. But never was a connection made between the harsh chemical herbicide and their sickness.
In 1958, at age twenty-two, Tony returned to Albany and reestablished himself as a student at New Jersey State University. He soon earned his teaching credentials and began working in the same neighborhood where he’d grown up. Eventually he married, had two beautiful children, and gave up teaching for a better salary working with the New Jersey State Labor Department as a training director.
At about the same time, early in 1970, Tony began feeling ill and losing weight. Several weeks after he first began having symptoms a doctor confirmed his worst fears. He had hairy cell leukemia, a rare form of lymphoma that was both painful and deadly.
“Sara, please pray for me,” Tony asked his sister when he told her the news. “I’m not ready to die yet.”
“Ah, Tony.” Sara could hardly believe that her younger brother had cancer. “Of course I’ll pray. I’ll pray for a miracle.”
For nearly a decade Tony was in and out of remission, but then he began worsening. His spleen was surgically removed, and after the operation the doctor told him he probably did not have long to live.
Determined to beat the odds, Tony changed doctors and in 1979 began seeing a specialist in the field of hematology, Dr. Taylor Johnson, at a hospital in New Jersey.
“The other doctor wrote me off,” Tony told Dr. Johnson. “Now don’t you go and do that, okay? I’ve got a lot more living to do.”
Dr. Johnson smiled. “You’re very sick, Tony,” he said. “But I think we can help you here. Besides, I want you to be around for the big test.”
“The big test?”
“Yes, Tony. Interferon. It’s an experimental drug right now, but it might be just what you need.”
“Well, let’s get it going.”
Dr. Johnson shook his head. “Not yet. It’ll take a few years before it’ll be ready. My job will be to keep you around until then.”
Tony’s outlook was very positive and his condition improved, but more than a year later in 1980, Dr. Johnson phoned him to say he was retiring from his practice.
“But don’t worry. I’ve got a brilliant young doctor taking my place. If anyone can keep you alive until the Interferon is available, it’s Dr. Fiona.”
“Dr. Fiona?” Tony was puzzled. “That name sounds familiar.”
“Well, I think you both grew up in New Jersey, so you’ve probably heard his name somewhere. I’ve set up an appointment for you to meet him right away.”
The first meeting between Tony and the young doctor was upbeat and positive.
“Your condition is serious,” Dr. Fiona said. “But I think I can help you stay alive until the Interferon is ready.”
Dr. Fiona was tireless, spending hours with Tony testing his blood and advising him about his condition. Throughout that year and the next there were several times when Tony nearly died. He would lie on a hospital bed clinging to life while machines cleaned his blood. Almost always Dr. Fiona would sit beside him holding his hand and praying for him. For Dr. Fiona, Tony was more than a patient with a rare form of leukemia. The two had grown up in Albany and had ancestors who were originally from Italy. Because of that, Dr. Fiona cared deeply for Tony and devoted himself to helping the man and his family deal with his cancer.
“Sometimes, all we can do is ask God to take over,” he would say occasionally. “We’re doing all we can, and now it’s up to him.”
Despite his brushes with death, Tony lived and Dr. Fiona continued to help him fight for time. Then, in the late 1980s, when Interferon finally became available, Dr. Fiona made sure that Tony was one of the first leukemia patients to use it. Almost immediately Tony’s body grew stronger, and by late 1989 he was in remission.
“You saved my life, Doc,” Tony said to him when he got the news. “I’m supposed to be dead right now, but you never gave up.”
“We did it together, Tony. You, me, and God. You’ve always been special to me. You’re a fighter.” He paused a moment. “And now I have something you can really fight for.”
Tony listened as Dr. Fiona explained that he wanted Tony to help him with a Christmas telethon he was about to do to raise awareness about leukemia and possible chemical causes. He also wanted to work with Tony in filing suit against the U.S. Army for exposing Tony to Agent Orange.
“I’m sure that Agent Orange is what caused your leukemia,” Dr. Fiona said. Both men knew that by then Agent Orange had been partially ban
ned because of its harmful side effects. “Now we need to see that nothing like that ever happens again to a group of soldiers.” He paused. “I know it’ll take up some of your Christmas time . . . but you know how God works. You’re bound to get more than you give.”
Dr. Fiona’s zeal was contagious, and Tony agreed heartily to help in the fight against both leukemia and government-approved exposure to harmful chemicals. The Christmas telethon was set to take place in a month, and since Tony would be on television, his sister, Sara, working as a reporter in New Milford, Connecticut, promised to watch.
“Wave to me,” she told Tony.
Tony laughed. “Oh, sure, Sara, you bet.”
Then there was silence for a moment, and when Sara spoke her voice was serious. “Really, Tony. I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m proud of you for being such a fighter.”
“It wasn’t me, it was Dr. Fiona.”
“Dr. Fiona?”
“You know, the doctor who’s been helping me these past ten years.”
“I know, I know. I’ve met him a dozen times when you were in the hospital. It’s just that his name sounds so familiar.”
“I thought so, too. He grew up in Albany, so we probably went to the same schools or something. Who knows?”
Now, on Christmas day, as Sara tuned in the station carrying the telethon, she was still puzzled by the name of Tony’s doctor. Where had she heard the name Fiona before?
She watched the telethon intently and saw that Tony was looking very well. He had survived hairy cell leukemia for nearly twenty years, and because of Dr. Fiona’s tireless monitoring and testing and his cancer-fighting procedures, Tony was the longest-living survivor of that form of cancer.
Sara watched as the cameras showed Dr. Fiona standing beside Tony, and suddenly she had a flashback. In her mind she pictured her brother as a three-year-old towhead nuzzling his face against the pregnant abdomen of Maria Fiona.
“My God, could it be?” she wondered out loud. The Fiona family had rented a flat to the Cannucci family when Sara was a young girl. Maria was pregnant back then, and Tony would have been about three years old.
That night Sara called her brother excitedly.
“Tony, do you know your doctor’s mother’s name?” she asked.
Tony was puzzled at her interest. “Sure,” he said. “Maria.”
Sara was stunned. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I just don’t believe it.”
She was flooded by a sudden wave of memories. “What is it, Sara?”
“Do you remember when we lived on North Eighteenth Street? You were just a little boy.”
Tony thought a moment. “Not really. I’ve heard about it. An apartment or something we rented from another family.”
“Tony, we rented from the Fiona family. You and I used to go and visit Maria Fiona, and you would always touch her stomach when she was pregnant. You were in awe over her unborn child, always looking at her and patting her and trying to feel the baby kick.”
“Okay, so?” Tony still did not see the connection.
“Don’t you understand? That baby was Sal Fiona. Your doctor. The one who saved your life. You were so taken by the life of that unborn child, and then that child grew up and saved yours.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I prayed for a miracle, Tony,” Sara said confidently. “And God was working one all along.”
Tony was stunned at the thought, and within minutes was on the telephone with Dr. Fiona.
“Yes, when I was born we were living on North Eighteenth Street,” Dr. Fiona said.
For a while the two men said nothing, absorbed in the realization of how their pasts had connected.
“It’s just about impossible to imagine something like that happening,” Tony said finally.
Sal Fiona smiled at his end of the conversation. “Not really, Tony. You might have been only a child, but children are always closer to God.” The doctor paused. “I told you God would give you something back for your time on Christmas day.”
Christmas Roses
Tara had nothing else to do that winter day, so when her friend saw her at school and asked her to come over for dinner, she shrugged and readily agreed.
“My brother’s having the football team over,” her friend explained. “If you come, at least I won’t be the only girl.”
Tara laughed and after talking with her friend a while longer made plans to see her that evening. Although Tara did not follow football, she knew that her friend’s brother was on a semiprofessional team based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was intrigued and made sure to do her hair carefully before walking to her friend’s house down the street.
That evening as the house filled with nearly thirty football players, Tara felt herself growing shy. She had just turned twenty and had always been quiet around boys, especially when they were in large groups as they were that night. After a while she separated herself and sat by the fireplace to warm her feet. While she was there, a handsome football player came over and introduced himself.
“I’m Andrew Mastalli.” The young man grinned, his eyes sparkling in the light of the fire. “But everyone calls me Andy.”
Tara couldn’t help but laugh, and with the ice broken the two talked through much of the evening. Andy was just twenty years old and determined to play football as long as possible. Tara listened intently as Andy spoke of his dreams, and when the evening ended, since Tara lived just three blocks away, Andy offered to walk her home.
“Know what I don’t like about the winter?” Andy asked as they made their way to Tara’s house.
“What?”
“No roses.”
“Roses?” Tara asked curiously.
“Roses are the best. Someday I want a home with my very own rosebush. There’s nothing like the smell of roses in the summertime.”
Tara smiled at her interesting companion. The next day when he called to take her for a drive, she wasn’t surprised.
“There’s an attraction there,” Tara told her friend a few weeks later, after she and Andy had dated several times. “But neither of us wants to get serious right now.”
Since neither of their families had much money and Andy’s mother was ill, the couple waited eight years before getting married. When they did, Andy brought Tara a rose to carry down the aisle.
“Now nothing can separate us, Tara,” he told her. “This is the happiest day of my life.”
Although a knee injury ended his football career, throughout the next twenty-eight years Andy and Tara shared a relationship few people ever have. Andy even got his wish—not long after they were married, they planted a rosebush in the yard of their home in Tulsa.
Then, shortly after his fifty-fourth birthday, Andy was passed over for a promotion at the school where he was the head maintenance worker.
“The kids loved him, the faculty loved him, everyone loved him,” Tara told her close friend sometime later. “The administrator was the only one who had something against him.”
When it became clear that Andy wouldn’t be getting the promotion, he began suffering symptoms of stress. He had headaches and chest pains and complained about feeling tired. Tara was worried about him and arranged for him to see a doctor.
“You need to take it easy, Mr. Mastalli,” the doctor told him. “But I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with you.”
But on a sunny afternoon just one week after the appointment with the doctor, Andy suffered a massive heart attack. Tara rushed to the hospital to be by Andy’s side, but there was nothing the doctors could do. Andy died.
The love of Tara’s life was gone forever. Without Andy, she plummeted into a deep depression that nothing could ease.
For weeks after his death students sent letters to Tara telling her what a wonderful man Andy had been and stating how badly they missed him. But nothing helped Tara’s grief.
Over the next several months Tara lost weight and rarely left the home she and Andy had shared. It was not unt
il late that year she began seeing friends and spending more time socializing. She even went on a few casual outings with a male friend of hers. But her heartbreak over losing Andy was still so great that it hurt too much to go out with the man. Christmas was approaching— Andy’s favorite time of the year—and she could not stop the terrible ache inside at missing him.
“I don’t know when I can see you again,” she told her male friend one night. “I still have so much of my past to deal with. You see, Andy and I were married for nearly thirty years. I just don’t know how to stop loving him after all that time.”
The week leading up to Christmas was perhaps the darkest of all for Tara, who felt as if she’d made an attempt to live again and failed. She still missed Andy so badly that she thought she might never leave home again.
Christmas morning dawned and Tara awoke to the heavy smell of ...roses. Puzzled, Tara climbed out of bed and wandered through the house. There was a Christmas snow on the ground and outside everything around her was frozen. Still, as she made her way from one room to the next, she was overwhelmed by the smell of Andy’s favorite flower.
Quickly she went to the telephone and dialed her friend and neighbor, Lisa.
“Please, Lisa. Come over right away,” she asked her friend. “I know it’s Christmas morning but I have to see you. Just for a minute.” She did not mention the roses because she wanted to see if the smell was only in her imagination. Since it was so strong, she knew that if she wasn’t imagining it, Lisa would recognize it as soon as she walked into the house.
“Hey, where are the roses?” Lisa asked as she opened the door bundled in a coat and boots. “It’s Christmas. No one’s supposed to have roses.”
Tara stared at her friend strangely and tears filled her eyes. Lisa realized that something was wrong. “What is it, Tara?”
“There aren’t any roses in the house. None at all. And there can’t be any on the bush outside because it’s frozen solid.”
Lisa looked around and suddenly an expression of understanding filled her face as if she understood.
“It’s from God, Tara,” she said. “He must want you to know that Andy’s fine and that everything’s going to be okay. You can go on with your life.”