Nicky drove up Broad Street, remembering his days as a hack, and how he’d slow down at corners, hoping for a fare. The reflex remained, and occasionally caused him some aggravation when he tapped the brakes at a green light when a corner fare was imminent, even though he was no longer in the business, and there was no meter inside the convertible.
Nicky took a familiar left turn and slowed down. Calla sat up in her seat. She looked at him, the street, and the row of houses.
“You’re not serious, are you, Nicky?”
Nicky pulled up in front of 832 Ellsworth Street and stopped the car. The gray porch still sloped. The flowerbeds were still lousy. The walkway had a crack in the concrete that was a few feet long, with a chunk missing at the gate. The wood planks on the porch needed paint, and the whole house needed new windows. The elm tree in the side yard had died of blight; where there once had been bright green branches, there were now gray antlers.
“But the house sold.”
“I bought it back for you.”
Calla buried her face in Nicky’s neck.
“Come on, let’s go inside.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s all yours.”
“I’m afraid if I open my eyes, it will be gone.”
“And I’m afraid if we don’t get to work on this old barn, it will fall down from neglect.”
Calla opened her eyes. Her home was where it had always been, from the day she was born. She had lost it, when it seemed she had lost everything.
“You must really love me,” she said.
“You’ll never know.” Nicky kissed her. “We’re home.”
Epilogue
November 1953
South Philly
There was an oak tree shading the lot on Montrose that had caused the Palazzini brothers their trouble in 1933. So many dead branches had been cut away through the years to save the tree, its thick trunk was scarred with flat circles where the saw had severed the limbs. But somehow the mighty oak had survived, and there were plenty of new branches with bright green leaves and nut pods that shook like beads as the wind blew through.
Dom and Mike stood on the sidewalk, surveying the lot that had caused the rift that led to the fight that marooned them on the island.
“I passed this lot every day, you know,” Dom said after a while.
“It gave me pleasure to know it.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“But not anymore.”
“Why now, Mike?” Dom looked at his brother, who in his opinion had held up pretty good for a man of his age. Maybe there was something to living it up and enjoying life that put a glow in a man’s cheeks and a certain pep in his deliberate step. Maybe vacations were good for people; maybe rest and a proper period of relaxation shored them up for the hard work that awaited them when they returned. Whatever the case, Dom could see that the years had blown past his brother, barely ruffling that thick white hair. The same had not been true for him. Dom wore the years with more lines on his face than the bus map of Philadelphia.
“I started thinking about Ma.” Mike kicked a small pebble with his shoe, away from the lot and into the gutter in the street.
“Yeah?”
“I got these daughter-in-laws—nice girls, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all about their families, their holidays, their mothers. I’m a check-cashing service. I might as well sit in a glass booth and disburse funds all day instead of sitting in my lounger. The men don’t matter so much as life goes on.”
“I get you,” Dom agreed.
“Maybe it’s for the best. I thought Ma was more important than Pop. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Pop had problems, so I don’t know if I can answer that. But Ma, she was a lady. We had nothing, you remember, but she made it seem like we had everything. She made Pop out to be a hero, like one of the Knights of the Round Table. He had sacrificed everything to come to America to provide for us. He was building bridges.”
“We thought he personally built America by himself, that he alone made transportation possible.” Mike smiled. “A welder with a union card.”
“You got to give him credit. Pop was brave because he worked high in the air without a net. And he sent every penny home to her. That stuck with me.”
“He missed her too, Dom.”
“You think so?”
“How could he not?”
“He had enough lady friends after she died.”
“He was lonely,” Mike reasoned.
“You always made excuses for him.”
“I probably always will.”
“That’s all right. Everyone deserves a good defense.” Dom buried his hands into his pockets.
Dom looked around the lot. He remembered when his father had purchased it for a song, a nickel, a pittance. No matter. The lot was a steal. Their father had a grand scheme to own Montrose Street, with both sons beholden to his power and wealth. Domenico was a journeyman, but he schemed like a king. He had big American dreams like a Rockefeller, but possessed enough self-recrimination to punish his sons for his own shortcomings. Instead of being circumspect, he was envious, even of his boys and their relationship, so he broke it. It was he who planted doubt between them, and allowed it to fester. Two against one never works in any competition, so the old gambler hedged his bet so both sons would remain loyal to him instead of each other. They did. But now, they were the only players left at the table. Neither Dom nor Mike had anything to prove.
Mike reached into the breast pocket of his coat and removed a blue envelope, folded and sealed. “Here’s the deed.”
“You keep it.”
“What?” Mike was stunned.
“You keep it. I got enough real estate.”
“Are you kidding me? You wanted it, now I’m giving it to you, and you won’t take it?”
“How much is it worth?” Dom reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of matches, and picked his canine tooth with the edge of the cover.
“I don’t know,” Mike answered honestly.
“No appraisal?”
“No.” Mike was confused.
“Haven’t called Bones Bonocetti?”
“Why would I call him?”
“To find out what the lot is worth.”
“I don’t care what the lot is worth, Dominic.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for you to part with it. It holds no value for you.”
“What?” Mike felt steam rising from his collar.
“You got a parcel in your real estate portfolio, and you don’t know its worth? What are you? An idiot?”
“Dom, I’ll knock you to the Parkway.” Mike backed up as if to slug his brother.
Dom took a step back, shuffling as if to avoid a punch. “Hey, hey, take it easy!”
Mike saw the glint of a tease in his older brother’s eye and dropped his fists. “You son of a—”
Dom chuckled. “I’m playing with you.”
“And I fell for it.” Mike massaged his chest. “I thought you were serious. My blood pressure. Mary Mother of God help me.”
“You’ll be all right.” Dom smirked and walked onto the lot. “Come on.”
Mike followed his brother.
No matter how old a man grows, the boy he was slumbers within him, taking up a corner of his soul where he once occupied the sum total of it. There are times when the sleeping boy stirs within the man, roused by the niggle of an old score that needs settling, or jolted awake by a sudden burst of physical strength that galvanizes his body in its ferocity. The old man will even experience the unexpected ripple of sexual desire that does not pass, but must be acted upon, until he is satisfied and satisfies the object of his passion, the latter lesson learned from a place of experience. In the man’s memory, he is never old and will never grow old. He is neither father or son, but just a boy, who time cannot own.
When the brothers reached the middle of the lot, Dominic stopped and looked up.
“Lot of sky here.”
/> “Until they build up Broad. All you need is one ten-story building, and your sky is shot,” Mike commented. “Hey. What am I supposed to do with this?” Mike waved the deed folded neatly inside the blue envelope, which was the exact color of the sky that day.
“Put it in your pocket,” Dom said quietly.
“You’re a piece of work.” Mike shook his head. “All that time, lost for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing.”
“How do you figure?”
“I had a kid brother who left me, stood on his own two feet, and built his own business. He built it so well, he almost ran me out of mine. Now, that’s a success. Had we stayed together, you never would have reached your potential.”
“You got smart in your old age?” Mike joked.
“My wife came up with that one.”
Mike bit his lip. “You really won’t take this lot?”
Dominic put his hands in his pockets. For a moment, he thought he might take the lot. He still had some ideas, a dream lying around here or there that might be realized if he massaged the situation just so. He thought of things that he could do before his life was over that might be a challenge met, or even just a fun enterprise for his amusement and profit. But none of Dom’s potential schemes mattered much when he weighed them against time he might spend with his brother. Those imagined moments, just the two of them, as they were in the beginning, happening anew, seemed priceless to Dom. They could become just a couple of kids again, figuring life out. This seemed like a pretty good segue to the inevitable dirt nap, the final good-bye, the eternal snooze after the anointing of the sick was administered on whatever dark day it happened to fall for either of them.
Dom decided he didn’t want the lot after all. But he did need to tell his brother what he had hoped all those years ago, so Mike might understand why they had a falling-out in the first place. So Dom looked down at the deed and said, “I just wanted you to offer it to me, Mike.”
Mike stood holding the deed, thinking Dom was a little nuts. If money was the cause of every split in every Italian family since the Etruscans, Mike had just found out why. Money loaned from family was validation; given, it was encouragement; shared, it was legacy; and when denied, it meant you had not measured up. You had not contributed enough. You had not made the family proud by the course of your actions, the details of your business plan, or the depth of your personal need. Money given could be a prize, but withdrawing it was always a punishment. Money was symbolic. If you made a lot of money, you knew something; if you held on to it, you were worth something. If you couldn’t do either of those things, you’d be better off becoming a priest.
It had taken Mike almost twenty years to understand what Dominic meant to him. Mike learned, without his brother in his life, that their relationship was fundamental, even when it was flawed; even when they were inept and inarticulate with one another and brought the worst of themselves forward, they still needed to be loved and to love one another. Mike felt lucky that he had figured out that he loved Dom more than he hated his brother’s limitations. With that realization came redemption. He opened his arms wide. It was as if a hundred black crows flew out of his chest and up into the sky until they were specks of ash over South Philly. He let it all go, the broken promises, the anger, and the determination to change his brother; it all was gone. Mike swore he could hear their wings as they departed toward heaven, releasing the years of resentment, and making the space for forgiveness.
Mike would mail the deed to his brother later. Or he’d leave it in secret with his sister-in-law, Jo. Or maybe he’d will it to one of his great-nieces or -nephews on Dom’s side for their Confirmation day or a wedding. Mike would come up with some way to move the chips to Dom’s side of the table without his brother’s knowledge. Mike slid the deed back into his pocket. “If you won’t take the lot, you have to let me do one thing for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Buy you a suit. You dress like an undertaker.”
Dom scowled, but before the impulse turned to anger, he chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Mike wanted to know.
“That you think you could take this”—Dom modeled his body—“and improve it.”
Mike was going to argue the point, but gave up. He laughed. Soon, Dom was laughing too. In the time that it took for one brother to tell a self-deprecating joke and the other to hear it, they were at peace once more. The dark days were over. Dom and Mike were together as they once had been in a place that they had tried to forget because it was easier to hate than to love. But love was so much better. It had only taken, what? Five? Ten? Twelve? Twenty years? It didn’t matter. Now they remembered. Now they understood. Now, they knew.
Postlude
May 3, 1954
Roseto Valfortore, Italy
A woman bent over the telegraph machine and tapped out the message coming in over the wire in code. She spun in her chair and typed out the telegram swiftly and accurately on the manual typewriter, a licorice black Olivetti.
She pulled the message from the carriage, attached it to the letterhead, folded it neatly, and slid it into an envelope. She went to the window and pushed open the bright blue shutters. The telegraph office in Alberona filled with the midday sun that reflected off the golden walls of the piazza. A group of young boys sat on the steps of the colonnade.
“Andiamo, Federico!”
The boy, around fourteen, came running. The woman handed him the telegram out the window. He jumped on a bicycle pulled from the clutter of them parked under the window, stuffed the envelope in his shirt pocket, and was about to pedal off when the woman shouted to him: “Il tuo cappello!”
She tossed his cap out the window. He caught it and put it on his head.
The boy pedaled through the town and out onto the main road. He took a turn and began to pedal up the hill to Roseto Valfortore.
The hillsides were covered in white blossoms over fields of green. The landscape looked like the finest swath of Fortuny velvet, the deep green embossed with lighter shades of mint where the sun fell behind the clouds into shadows on the peaks.
The boy stood up on the bike, taking the rake of the steep hill in long strides. His lean form threw a long shadow on the road, which was inlaid with smooth stone that had neither a groove nor a crack in it. In these ancient hills, this particular road was easy to navigate; it was smooth in the modern fashion, with gutters to funnel rain down the mountain without flooding the pass.
As the boy rounded the top of the hill, the fig trees that grew in abundance near the entrance of the town sprouted citrine buds that would bloom and grow into sweet fruit.
Carlo Guardinfante stood on the balcony outside his bedroom, holding his newborn son. The sweet scent of the roses blooming on the village walls drifted through the air. Everything, as far as he could see, was fertile, rich, and ripening under the warm Italian sun.
The piazza below was crowded with Rosetani shopping at the outdoor market. Fruit of every kind, fresh fish from the Adriatic, flowers from neighboring Foggia, fabric from Prato—it was all displayed under bright canopies for the locals.
Carlo looked beyond the piazza. The new road from the village down the mountain to the main highway was traveled with such frequency that Carlo ordered traffic signs made and requested that a carabiniere be assigned to deal with the traffic as it flowed into and out of the village. No longer isolated, the Rosetani were part of the world again.
From his window that morning, Carlo could hear the music of ordinary conversation, Rosetani bartering and laughing as they shopped. It reminded him of what life was like when he was a boy, and he was pleased. His own son would know the childhood that he had known.
The boy in the cap pedaled up to the entrance of the villa. He hopped off the bicycle and spun the chimes on a wheel next to the front door. Soon the houseman opened the door. The boy tipped his cap and handed the old man the telegram. The old man dug in his trouser pocket for a coin. He found it and ga
ve it to the boy. The boy thanked him, jumped back on his bicycle, and coasted down the hill.
Carlo watched the boy glide down the road effortlessly like a gray feather floating in a gentle breeze.
“Bring the baby, Carlo,” Bette called out.
“He needs fresh air.”
“He needs milk.”
“He likes the balcony.”
“I’m his mother. Bring him to me.”
Carlo smiled and did as he was told.
Bette was propped up on pillows in their bed. She extended her arms. “Come here,” she said. Carlo handed the infant to Bette. She nursed him.
The houseman slipped the telegram under the door.
“Father DeNisco said to tell you the baptism is set for Sunday.” Carlo pulled the coverlet up to his wife’s waist. He went around the bed and propped up the pillows behind her so she would be more comfortable as she nursed the baby.
“Are you sure about his name?” Elisabetta wondered as she looked down at her son.
“I like it. Don’t you?”
“Very much. But it has never been used in our families, and tradition says the baby should be named after your father. His name should be Carlo.”
“I like Nicolo,” Carlo said. “Nic is very modern.”
“Nic sounds American.” Elisabetta smiled. “Not that I mind.”
“Our son should be as generous as our friend Nick Castone.”
Carlo picked up the telegram and opened the envelope.
“Bad news?” Elisabetta asked him anxiously.
“It’s from Nick and Calla.”
He read aloud:
NEW BABY IS COMING. OVERJOYED. KEEP THE ROAD CLEAR. NC
“Wonderful news! I will write to them,” Elisabetta said.
“See? You worry too much, and you worry for nothing.”
“I can’t help it, Carlo.”
“When the baby arrives, I’ll invite them for the summer.” Carlo was delighted.