All This Talk of Love (21 page)

“Come on, Frankie, that’s not fair. And not true at all. Honestly? I don’t really understand what you do. But I figured, you work at a university, and universities get spring break off.”
Th
ere’s commotion in the background of her house, dishes being washed or trash taken out. “Listen. I don’t tell you this enough, but you’re the smartest guy I know.”

“You must run with a pretty dim crowd.”

“I’m serious.”

“OK.”

“I want us to be closer.”

“OK.”

“I don’t want us to always be fighting. It makes me sad. We should be on the same side.”

“OK.”

“Even though you’re away. We need to talk more. I want to come up at some point. Me and Patrick. Or me and Tom. Or just me. I’ve never been to Boston.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Frankie says.
Th
en he regrets it.
Th
ere’s a defeated wistfulness in Prima’s voice that he can’t quite read. Nostalgia? Most of their lives they’ve been polite strangers, like coworkers who clash on every issue but seek each other out to sit with at the office picnic. Lately, though, their clashing has felt sharper, more charged. Birch would argue this has to do with Tony, but Frankie blames it more on millennial anxiety. Everyone’s on edge as they stumble into this jumpy new century. “
Th
at could be all right,” he says. “
Th
ere’s a lot to see here. Hey! Why don’t we just make Boston the big family trip? It’d be cheaper and easier all around.”

“Boston?”

He finds himself sincerely excited by this possibility. He’s never had the opportunity to show anyone around his city, walk them down the Freedom Trail, explore the historic sites like a tourist. He’s never been to the Cape, but the beach cottages there have to be less expensive than their Italian equivalents, even in August. “Mom would love that, don’t you think? She’d have no argument.”

Again that heavy sigh, and the attempt to power through it with levity. “It’s sweet of you,” Prima says. “But you don’t really want us invading your turf. We’d drive you crazy.”

“I wouldn’t call this my turf. And I’m asking you to invade it,” he says. “I’d . . . like you to. Really and sincerely.”

“It not the same.”

“Because it’s not your idea. Because you won’t be in charge of every detail.”

“Jesus,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re so hard on me.”

Because you have lots of plans, Frankie thinks, but no ambition. No big ideas. Look at the Al Di Là, almost fifty years strong, built from nothing; look at his own quest to ensure that his scholarship not only outlasts him but influences future generations.
Th
ere’s honor there. He’s proud of his father, and of himself.
Th
e Grasso women, though, sadly, have not transcended. Test their blood: it’s half tradition, half fear. Maddalena and Prima were taught to maintain, to carry on, to beautify—not to create or renovate. (Look at their living rooms: sterile as museums, plastic on the sofas,
Capodimonte
figurines dusted daily.) No one encouraged them to build or look beyond or even look around. He respects his mother for making the best of her life in a new country, a new language, with a stranger for a husband, but he does not respect Prima for the choices she’s made. How does she know she’s got the best job in the world if it’s the only one she’s ever tried? “I’m sorry, Prima,” he says, because he can’t tell her any of this.

“Decide about Easter,” she says. “I have to know now. I need you to be aware that we’re all going at Easter—Mom, Dad, Tom, the boys—with or without you.
Th
ere’s a reason.”

“So much for making sure it fit my schedule. I swear, Prima—”

Th
en she tells him her reason. But it’s a lie.

Afterward, Frankie sits on the kitchen floor. It’s not quite eleven o’clock, but he calls his mother, anyway, right away, and she’s no different, she’s fine. Better than fine. She’s just back from a lesson at the studio, and Arlene is over for a glass of wine. She ignores Arlene and talks with Frankie for twenty minutes.
Th
ey’ve talked for at least twenty minutes every night since he left Wilmington the day before New Year’s Eve, and not once has she given him a single reason to believe the lie that Prima told him. She has no evidence from a doctor. She hasn’t discussed the issue with their father. All she has is her own paranoid assumptions and some bullshit she read in
Redbook.
So what if she put a carton of milk in the wrong cabinet? So what if she can’t find the right word every once in a while? He’s furious with Prima, with her cruel attempt to exert control over their family. Maybe if she had something of her own in her life and didn’t live vicariously through her kids and her husband, she wouldn’t create problems where problems didn’t exist. Frankie wonders whether it’s Prima’s mind, not their mother’s, that’s starting to crack.

Th
e front door slamming shut breaks him from the riot of fears and speculation in his head. He scrambles to his feet, slides down the hall in his tube socks, and makes it to the porch in time to see a bundled-up person of unidentifiable gender trudging toward campus through the blizzard.
Th
e gait of Anita’s lover is neither manly nor womanly; it is the gait of a cold person, arms folded across the chest, head bowed to the horizontally falling snow. Curse these neighbors and their darkened porch lights! Better yet: curse Prima for distracting him, for putting the wrong ideas in his head. Now they’ll fester there, he knows, for the rest of his life. He’ll never sleep.

He needs to escape his head. He calls Kelly Anne, but she doesn’t pick up. He wanders the apartment, which gets smaller and smaller the longer he circles it. He shuts himself in his room and turns the TV on loud. He takes the letter from the front pocket of the backpack and holds it in his left hand. His pants are around his ankles. He’s seen enough of Anita’s lover to imagine an athlete—a soccer player, maybe—showing her new girlfriend the ropes.
Th
e TV’s on loud enough to muffle the sound of his mattress creaking.
Th
e coach of the soccer team, a solid but still-feminine woman in her early forties, somehow discovers the girls in the bedroom and teaches them both a lesson they’ll never forget. He sustains the fantasy for five minutes, ten, but it’s useless. He can’t get it up.

He rips open the letter. It’s three sentences long.

“
Th
ough Dr. Carr admired your—”

“We regret to inform you that, after much—”

“Christopher Curran—”

He pads his way out to the dining room table in his wet socks. Jim Delaney’s disaster of an essay stares up at him from the top of a stack of disasters.
Th
e words scramble and blur on the page. Chris Curran? Frankie didn’t waste a single second of worry on him. It doesn’t matter. His mind is on fire.
Th
ere’s only one thing that matters. He calls his mother again, and his own voice on the machine asks him to leave a message, but he can’t speak through his tears. She picks up. “Hello? Hello, Frankie? Is that you?”
Th
e last thing he wants is for her to worry about him any more than she already does. If there’s really something wrong with her, it could make her worse. It’s enough to hear her saying, over and over, “Hello? Hello? Frankie? Is that you? I can’t hear you.” He listens as long as she stays on the line. She sounds like his mother of always.
Th
en she hangs up. And though he has nowhere to go, he puts on his boots, runs out into the snow, and keeps running.

LAST YEAR WAS
a good one for the Al Di Là, and look: the first two months of 2000 bring double the profits of the same time in 1999, profits so big the managers ambush Antonio all three together to ask for raises. He’s sitting at the front window, linguine carbonara going cold on his plate, when the managers surround him, old Gilberto, Maurizio, and Olindo, each with his reason.
Th
ey work too many late hours; they are married men with cars to shine and lawns to keep green; they never see their wives and kids and grandkids and girlfriends; they’ve been loyal to Antonio through the tough times; the chain restaurants on 202 pay double for less work.

Antonio listens, empty fork in hand. A gentleman doesn’t eat in front of his employees.

“I don’t see how a raise will solve your problems,” he says. “You’ll still work the same hours. Sounds like you want me to hire somebody new. I can do that for less than a raise for each of you.”

“It’s about respect,” says Maurizio.

“Let’s put the cards on the table,” says Gilberto, who’s been at the Al Di Là since the day it opened. He almost left in ’86 to open his own place in Baltimore, then changed his mind. He’s the top manager and, along with DiSilvio, the closest thing Antonio has to a brother. “We don’t care so much about the hours. We want the raise.”

Antonio unfolds his napkin and lays it across the plate of cold pasta, the bacon losing its shine, the egg in clumps. “You ruined my lunch,” he says, “but I’ll think about it.”

Days later he’s in the same spot with the same dish, except Prima and Ryan, who’s home for the weekend, sit on either side of him.
Th
ey’re halfway through the meal before Prima finally asks, “So what’s the occasion, Dad? Why didn’t you want us to bring Tom or Patrick or Mom?”

He calls over the managers, who are here for a wine tasting, and asks them to sit. “How’s this?” he asks them. “How about I give all three of you a raise
and
you work less hours?”

“We like that,” says Olindo, the newest guy.

“What’s the catch?” Gilberto says.

“No catch,” says Antonio. He turns to Ryan. “My grandson here, he’ll be home from college in June. He’s my oldest, very intelligent, very handsome, as you can see. He’s got nothing to do this summer. He needs to work—not for the money, for the experience. He’s been a waiter here before—Gilberto remembers him—but not a manager. So you three can give him some training. And if you train him good, he takes over some of your shifts, you get the time off, and a small raise at the end of the summer.”

“How much is ‘small’?” asks Maurizio.

“Um, Nonno?” Ryan says. “Did we talk about this when I was drunk or something? I don’t remember ever—”

“
Zitto,
” says Antonio. He puts his hand on the boy’s leg.

“So the better job the boy does, the bigger raise we get?” asks Olindo.

Maurizio looks suspicious. “To train somebody is not easy, without a guarantee of funds—”

“Antonio will take care of us,” Gilberto says. “You should know that by now.”

“You start in June,” Antonio says to Ryan. “Your school will be over by then.”

“Aren’t you full of surprises,” says Prima to her father. “It’s a great idea, I think. Don’t you, Ryan?” She sits up straight. “You want to spend the summer in Wilmington, anyway, right?
Th
ere’s nothing in Syracuse. You’ve got free room and board at Casa Buckley.”

“I gotta think about it,” Ryan says. “
Th
ere’s this job at a pro shop my buddy was telling me about . . .”

Th
e wine guy, Enzo, shows up with his crate of bottles, and for the next hour the six of them taste Chiantis and Montepulcianos and some dry whites from the north.
Th
e Al Di Là tradition is to serve only Italian imports, but today, as he does every visit, Enzo tries to persuade Antonio to open up his mind to California and France and—
stunod
that he is—Australia. “What’s your opinion, Ryan?” Antonio asks.

He thinks a second. “Nobody comes to Little Italy looking for wine from Kangaroo Land,” he says.

“You hear that?” Antonio says to Enzo, handing him back the Syrah without a sip. “
Th
e new manager has spoken.”

Prima is happy—Antonio can tell—but Ryan isn’t quite convinced. From what Antonio has seen of his grandson, though, he fell in love with the place from the beginning, not as much as Tony, but close, and he’ll learn the manager job quick. Eventually, if the love affair is real, he can take over the place. Two summers ago, when Ryan waited tables, it didn’t take long for the customers to ask for him by name. A natural salesman, he was always warm and friendly, but professional, clean shaven, his hair perfect and shiny with that sticky stuff guys put in it now. He flirted with the ladies—young or old, it didn’t matter—and made the men feel like big shots when they ordered veal or the expensive wines. He never got tired, not even after working lunch and dinner on the same Saturday. When one of the other waiters asked Antonio if he was sure his grandson didn’t take speed, he told him he didn’t have to: speed was in the Grasso blood. Hard work at a high speed had built the Al Di Là and kept it running. It didn’t matter much that Ryan showed up late once in a while, that he sometimes had beer on his breath, and that once he dropped a bowl of mussels on a customer’s arm; the other waiters liked him enough to cover for him, he could just pop a breath mint in his mouth when he needed to, and the customer he burned was a cheap bastard Antonio had never liked to begin with.

Maddalena approves of Antonio’s plan for Ryan. He hasn’t told Frankie yet, but he knows he will be relieved.
Th
e pressure will be off him to carry on the Al Di Là tradition. Frankie might not realize this yet, but he will want and need young family like Ryan and his other nephews in his life down the line. After Antonio and Maddalena go, Prima won’t be too far behind, and the youngest will be left alone. Antonio doesn’t expect to be alive by the time Frankie gets married and has kids of his own, but Maddalena still believes it will happen soon. She thinks that she sees everything, that she can translate what the kids really mean when they talk and can explain why they make the choices they make in life. In her mind she is inside them every second, like a saint or a witch, feeling what they feel, the pain and the pleasure both. But she’s not.