“I could add shows. Advertise. I thought about a touring company. I don’t have the resources to grow it. If I had help, I could do it. I know I could.”
“The only assurance you can give a bank is past performance. Those ledgers show an occasional break-even at best.”
The tone she heard in her cousin’s voice was all she needed to know that he was not going to help her any further. “Well, thanks for taking a look at everything.”
“I’m not going to charge you.”
“Please do.” Calla stood and picked up her box of ledgers.
“I don’t want this to cause friction.” Joe stood up to see her out.
“It won’t.”
“I’m glad.”
Calla got to the door and turned to her cousin. “You know, Joe, there is something you could do to help that has nothing to do with the books.”
“Sure.”
“You could come see a play sometime. You never have.”
“I’m so busy. You know. I got the wife. The kids. The job.”
“My dad was your father’s client all those years, and I believe my dad paid his bills on time.”
“He did.”
“Your dad never missed a show. See, I’m not inclined to take your advice as gospel truth this morning because it’s coming from a place of ignorance. Now, if it was your dad telling me to padlock the building, I might think about it. But your free advice? What’s the saying? Oh yeah, when it’s free, you get what you pay for.”
Calla walked out the door before Joe could see her eyes sting with tears. She was furious, and embarrassed that she hadn’t seen it coming.
Frank was waiting on the sidewalk outside the Calabrese office. He dusted a smudge off the hood of the car with his handkerchief as Calla came down the steps.
“What happened?” Frank asked as he opened the car door for her.
“He said that I should close the doors on the theater.”
“Just like that?”
“He won’t help me with the banks.” Calla leaned her head on her hand. “Said it was impossible to get a loan. I thought there were all sorts of loans for small businesses after the war.”
“How about lunch?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“What can I do to make you smile?”
“Do you know J. P. Morgan?”
* * *
Frank took Calla’s hand as he walked her up to the porch of a two-family home on Constitution Street. His side of the property was neat, with a simple set of two straight-back chairs anchoring the door. On the other side, a baseball bat, glove, and ball were propped by the door, a homemade cardboard dollhouse was set under the window, and the grass in the small patch of yard was trampled down to the dirt. “My sister lives next door. Four kids and one on the way.”
Calla looked around Frank’s living room, if she could call it that. His coffee table was filled with documents, a stack of papers anchored with a coffee cup with a handwritten note under it that read “BIDS.” Propped in the corner was a survey kit, tripod sticks, a leveler, and a gauge. Tacked up on the wall was a map of Philadelphia, showing the pipeworks under the city, the grid unlike anything she had ever seen before.
As Calla moved around the room, she kept her hand behind her back as though she were in a museum. If she had a weakness, it was for experts. She appreciated anyone who understood a subject deeply and had mastered that subject in a profound way. A person with passion was endlessly fascinating, no matter the arena.
“If a pipe bursts on Wharton, I can name the joint,” Frank said, handing her a glass of red wine.
“Thank you.”
“Your friend Nicky should have his street patched up in no time,” Frank said, pointing to Montrose, represented by a long, thin blue strand that looked like a linguini noodle on the map.
“I’ll tell him.”
“Come here.” Frank led Calla to the alcove off the living room and pointed to a small settee covered in brown corduroy with white piping. “Sit.”
Calla recognized the television set from the windows of Wanamaker’s and the Sunday circulars. Frank’s set was a Philco with a square screen of green milk glass that rested inside a walnut cabinet. On either side of the screen were two panels of gold-and-brown mesh fabric. A long, thin silver stick resembling a conductor’s baton angled out from the back of the set, pointing directly toward the front door.
“That’s the antenna. You have to position it just so to get the best picture.” He pointed. “And these are the speakers for sound.”
“It looks like a piece of furniture.” Calla laced her arms around her legs and leaned forward as Frank sat down on the floor and opened a small panel that had three dials, an on and off button, a contrast button, and a brightness button with an arrow. “These buttons control the picture quality.”
“What are you waiting for? Entertain me,” Calla teased.
Frank turned on the television set. A series of black-and-white lines gave way to wider ones that vibrated, expanding into bold chevron-style zigzags that belonged on an argyle sweater. “Hold on, it’s coming.” In a matter of seconds, a moving picture appeared on the screen, a car riding along an open country road. “This is a commercial. An advertisement for the show. Ford is paying for whatever you’re going to see.”
“Why?”
Frank shrugged. “People will buy the car if they see it enough.”
“People would just do that?”
“Why not? You’d buy it off a billboard or a magazine.”
Calla watched Gertrude Berg appear on the screen. She appeared in a window on a set, and hollered down to the street below as if in a play. The audience’s laughter was captured. They must be there. Calla was mesmerized.
“This is television.” Frank kept his eyes on the screen.
“How do they do it?”
“The image is transmitted from the camera in the studio to a board that can reach every grid that is connected to it.”
“Like electricity?”
“A little. The transmission of an image requires a cathode ray tube—which every one of these sets has inside. The man that sold it to me showed me the guts of this thing. I couldn’t believe it.”
“What will happen to radio?”
Frank shrugged. “Who cares?”
Calla sat back and watched the images. They weren’t sleek like the movies, or colorful, like the lavish Hollywood productions in movie theaters that cost a quarter, but this was in Frank’s home, which made it novel. The black-and-white images reminded her of photographs; the lighting made the actors fall in shadow and emerge in light that made them appear like puppets, more Man Ray than cinematic.
“Hey, what do you think?” Frank turned to her.
“I don’t know what to think. It moves awful fast.”
* * *
Nicky parked on the street two blocks from the Trinity Episcopal Church in Ambler. The lot closest to the entrance was full, and the street in front by the Matthews Funeral Home had been roped off.
This morning in May was saturated with so much color, Nicky seemed to walk in a Tiepolo painting. The sky overhead was peacock blue. A tangerine sun was fixed on a cushion of coral clouds, as Nicky passed azalea bushes bursting with fuchsia blossoms, and flowerbeds filled with yellow tulips and purple irises. He moved through this palette dressed in ceremonial black like a slash of ink. He tugged at the knot in his tie as he walked in his best black leather dress shoes up the steps of the church and into the vestibule.
A well-dressed lady in a hat and gloves, wearing two-tone spectator pumps, the dress shoe of choice of the Protestant class, handed him a program, on the front of which was printed:
Gary Bigelow Allison
1903–1949
An usher led Nicky up the aisle. Nicky stopped, choosing to sit near the back so that the seats in the front pews might go to a mourner who knew Mr. Allison, had worked with him, was related to him, or had loved him. Nicky had been his driver on that fateful day.
That was all.
Once seated, Nicky looked up the aisle, surprised to see the casket in place in front of the altar, banked with a simple blanket of the waxy green leaves of the local mountain laurel that had yet to bloom. He had never been to a funeral outside his own church, so this would be a new experience for him.
The church was full, but not overflowing. The mourners were dressed in somber tones in fine fabrics, plain silks, light summer wool, the ladies wore simple hats and short gloves. They sat in white pine pews, facing a stained glass window of Jesus kneeling in the garden of Gethsemane. The windows along the sides of the aisles were clear beveled glass. The altar was plain, as was the lectern, covered in a white ceremonial cloth. The window featuring Jesus was all the adornment in the church.
At first, the austere interior threw Nicky, who expected the polish of brass or glint of crystal in this comfortable suburb. Where was the hand of a Michelangelo, even if it was a copy, or the flair of a Bernini, even if it was an imitation, or the genius of Leonardo, even if it was a smaller-scale reproduction of a sculpture? The scent of Madonna lilies wafted through the air, but he missed the incense of his Holy Roman Church and the sweet scent of the beeswax from the candles burning in the votive trays.
Nicky had learned to pray in ornate splendor; it was what he was used to, and what his faith provided, in exchange for his lifelong devotion. When Nicky prayed to earn his salvation, he pictured the magnificence of the art of the Renaissance, in jewel-toned oil paint, gold leaf, and silver-veined marble, awaiting him on the other side. From the looks of this church, his Protestant brethren could expect a Shaker bench and an oil lamp in their version of the promised “house with many rooms” when they reached the gates of heaven.
A minister in a black suit emerged from the sacristy as the choir sang. Mrs. Allison and her sons, guided by the undertaker, walked up the aisle, taking their seats in the front row. Nicky leaned forward as the minister talked about Gary Allison, what a fine man he had been, husband, father, and co-worker.
Gary’s eldest son stood to eulogize his father. He spoke of a parent who taught him how to hunt and fish, throw a baseball, and camp in the woods. The words stung Nicky as he listened to the testimony of the life of a good man by a son who knew his father well.
Nicky had spent countless hours imagining what might have been had his own father lived. Would they have been friends? Or would he have had the other kind of father-son relationship, fraught with misunderstandings and pain and missed opportunities to connect? The thought made him weep. He hated himself for crying.
He found his handkerchief in his suit pocket and dabbed his eyes. He questioned why he had come to the funeral at all. But given that something had compelled him to attend, he was now forced to accept his portion of a grief that didn’t belong to him.
Gary’s youngest son rose to speak. Nicky thought about leaving in the moments it took the young man to walk from the pew to the lectern, but the usher had blocked him in, and he was reluctant to climb over the old couple on the end of the pew. Forced to listen, he sat back and was trying to think of something, anything, else when he heard Mr. Allison’s son say, “Dad had never been across the ocean, and this would have been his first trip.”
Nicky wanted to stand up and shout, “Your father knew he had a bad heart, he shouldn’t have waited!” but then he remembered the man could hardly be blamed for that, and besides, travel is a luxury, and the man had a family. But now Gary Allison was gone, and it turned out that he had not done everything he had hoped to do. Nicky had seen the desperation in Mr. Allison’s eyes that day. Though he knew he had a bad heart, Mr. Allison did not want to die, and he had not planned on dying that day. It was all taken from him, and he’d had no say in the matter.
Nicky felt a wave of claustrophobia so acute he could not breathe. He began to sweat profusely as his heart raced. Putting etiquette aside, he whispered a sincere apology, climbed over the couple at the end of the pew, and escaped from the church outside into the day that shimmered like a ruby. Once free, he inhaled the fresh air in huge gulps, savoring it, filling his lungs, feeling the space of the outdoors where there were no walls.
Nicky got his bearings. As he slowly walked back to his car, he heard the ticking of the big clock, the one that determines the exact moment of a man’s birth and his death and is marked by every timepiece set by the sun. He saw the days of his life pass in the plain-faced round clock in the auditorium at Saint Charles Borromeo school, in the priest’s small gold travel clock in the sacristy at Saint Rita’s, in the cuckoo in the kitchen at the Palazzinis’, and on the flashing counter on a grenade in France. Time flew on the ticker in the dispatch office, the flimsy tin one in the garage that also housed a thermometer, the wristwatch on his arm, and on the stopwatch that Mrs. Mooney used to remit a code. He heard it on the clock that rested on his nightstand with the alarm that sounded like a garbage disposal when it jumped, metal on wood, reminding him to get up and own the day that didn’t belong to him.
Time dragged on the clock that hung in the lobby of the First National Bank when he went for the loan, the Roman numeral clock set in filigree in the dressing room at Borelli’s when he waited between scenes, and the one in the train station in Rome with the mother-of-pearl face whose onyx hands had stopped and made him miss the train that would return him to the port city to catch the boat that would bring him home to America after the war. He heard every timepiece that ever ticked, rang, gonged, buzzed, chimed, and heaved Nicky toward the end of a life whose purpose he had surrendered to please everyone but himself.
Until he didn’t. Soon the only sound he heard was the barking of a dog in the distance and a curlicue of laughter that trailed off as a cluster of girls skipped past.
It was time for Nicky Castone to live a life that mattered, where the long hours of the days of his life would be spent doing work he loved, that meant something to him, that brought meaning to the world that could only be delivered by him, where risk meant growth and the reward came in the doing.
Everything must go, he decided as he climbed into the car, and everything would—because he knew now, with a certainty that few men possess, that it would soon be him lying in a pine casket under a blanket of laurel leaves on a spring day of unspeakable beauty.
Nicky Castone decided he must not die until he had lived.
4
Calla’s legs dangled over the lip of the stage as she flipped through the loose-leaf binder that contained the script of Twelfth Night. Nicky sat next to her, peering over her shoulder. She found the scene she was looking for, and as she read, without looking up, she took Nicky’s cigarette from his hand, lifted it to her lips, and inhaled a puff. She handed it back to him and kept reading.
“I didn’t know you smoked.” Nicky ashed the cigarette into the company ashtray, an old tin can that used to house split pea soup.
“I don’t.”
“You just took a drag off my cigarette.”
“It was one puff. It calms me down.”
“Then you’re a smoker.”
“I’ve never bought a pack of cigarettes in my life.”
“That makes you a bum.”
“I’m not a bum. I’ve never smoked an entire cigarette.”
“Over the course of your life, let’s say since you were fifteen . . .”
“Sixteen.”
“Since you began bumming a drag off a cigarette, you’re now, what, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-four, but thanks. I’ll need those three years on the back nine.”
“I don’t think so but, you’re welcome. Then you’ve had at least an entire pack of cigarettes in eleven years of bumming—maybe more.”
“You could be right.” Calla jumped up on the stage. “It still doesn’t make me a smoker.”
“What’s wrong with being a smoker?”
“Nothing. It’s not something I want to do on a regular basis.”
“Why? Who cares if you smoke?”
“Frank.”
/> “Oh, Frank.” Nicky put his hand on his heart.
“Yes, Frank. Promise me you’ll never put your hand on your heart when you’re in one of my plays.”
“I won’t.” Nicky put his hand down and into his pocket.
“He doesn’t like when a lady smokes.”
“Not a Bette Davis fan, I guess.”
“He’s not. Linda Darnell. Gene Tierney. Those are his types.”
“Brunettes.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not at all. Look at Peachy. Her hair is as black as a Firestone tire.”
“I hope you come up with more romantic ways to describe her to her face, when the moment calls for it.”
“She doesn’t have any complaints.” Nicky put out his cigarette in the can and jumped up onto the stage next to Calla. “Believe you me.”
“Anything you say, Nicky.”
“At least, she’s never voiced her complaints. Where do I go when Viola is revealed?”
“I have you entering stage left. You stop downstage here. Cheat out just a bit and wait for the Duke.” Calla gently put her hands on Nicky’s shoulders and blocked him in the scene. She jumped off the stage and ran up the aisle, turning to face him. “Okay, Viola’s cue is ‘Hath been between this lady and the Lord,’ and you say to Olivia—”
Nicky cheated out, turning ever so slightly toward the audience just as Calla had blocked him. He tucked the script under his arm and spoke:
So comes it, lady, you have been mistook:
But nature to her bias drew in that,
You would have been contracted to a maid;
Nor are you therein, by my life deceived,
You are both betroth’d to a maid and a man.
“These particular lines delivered by Sebastian are the pith of the whole play.”
“They’re in my hands?” Nicky shook his head.
“Your hands. Sorry, pal. You have to let the audience know that you know that Olivia has fallen for Viola, who has been posing as a man. But you’re her twin, and she has agreed to marry you, thinking you’re Viola posing as Cesario. You have to tee this up for Viola.”