All This Talk of Love (22 page)

She doesn’t see that Frankie’s too selfish, that he’s one of those types who’ll wake up at forty-five a grown man and have to do all at once the grown-man things he should have been doing all along: job, wife, house, kids. Antonio knows lots of men like this, men no more unhappy than anybody else. Frankie’s not as complicated as Maddalena makes him out to be.

Does nobody else plan or think ahead the way Antonio does? It used to be considered healthy, but it’s not what people on TV tell you to do anymore. On CNN the doctors keep saying that the secret to life is to live “in the moment,” but Antonio does not like this expression.
Th
e moment is always already past. As soon as you recognize it—as soon as you say,
Th
is is right, my heart is full, oh, how beautiful everything is!—
the moment is outside you, and you’re looking in and can’t get it back.
Th
e best you can do is stay three steps ahead of tragedy. It’s like driving on the freeway. If you keep your eyes on the cars far in front of you, you’ll never get into a wreck. Sixty years he’s been driving in this country, and not a single scratch. It’s not luck.
Th
ere are no accidents, just people who don’t care enough to keep safe, who are too lazy to pay attention.

“We worry about you, you know,” Antonio says to Ryan. “Up at that school all by yourself.” He’s skinnier than he was just two months ago at Christmas. His skin pale.
Th
is is what happens when you’re away from family too long. “You get enough to eat there? You take care of yourself?”

“You kidding?” Ryan says. “College is the balls!”

“
Language,
” says Prima.

“
Th
at means it’s good?” Antonio asks.

“
Th
at means it’s really good.”

“Well, I’m glad,” Antonio says.
Th
ey go over some of what the manager job will require—the hours, the uniform, dealing with the kitchen—and Ryan says that he doesn’t mind hard work, that the Al Di Là’s the coolest thing about his family. His high school friends still bring their dates here. “It’s a part of Wilmington history,” he says. “Like the du Ponts or the Charcoal Pit.
Th
at summer I waited tables? I got more chicks than I could count. Remember, Ma?”

“You spared very few details,” says Prima.

“
Th
at means you’re excited to be my new summer manager?” Antonio asks. “You think it’s ‘the balls,’ too?”

“
Th
at means I’ll definitely think about it,” he says. “Here’s the thing, though. If I’m gonna be here all summer, you gotta hang out.
Th
is place is more fun with you around.”

Antonio draws a long breath, lets it out slow. “You’re a good boy,” he says. “Don’t worry. If you come work for me, it will be like you say, the balls.”

“And I’ll teach you some new expressions,” Ryan says.

Before they leave, Prima takes Antonio aside. “
Th
ank you,” she says with tears in her eyes. Antonio watches them get into their car and waves as they drive away.

It’s the middle of the afternoon, that time of peace in the restaurant day that Antonio loves most (unless he counts the weekend dinner rush, when the line of customers crowds the entrance and spills out onto the sidewalk—for that he feels a different kind of love).
Th
e dining room is quiet and clean, the lights dim; he can hear the dishwashers singing the old songs, and the hum of the freezers, and the bar glasses clinking as they’re put away.
Th
e TV’s on without sound.
Th
e front doors are locked, the shades pulled over the glass even though there’s no sun. It’s a gray winter’s day and will be for a long time. Gilberto, who’ll stay through the dinner shift, reads the
Corriere della Sera
in the corner booth, no shoes, his feet up on the seat.
Th
e paper takes two weeks to show up in the mail, but since nothing ever happens fast in Italy, news two weeks late is right on time.

When the customers arrive, Antonio gives up his table by the window.
Th
e early-bird dinner special, Gilberto’s idea, ends at seven. So far it’s a big hit: they offer a smaller menu that they can xerox in the back office, a few simple pasta dishes and hot sandwiches with a side salad and a glass of wine, and the people can’t get enough. Gilberto is proud. Maurizio’s new idea, on the other hand—a late-night bar menu on the weekends—Antonio doesn’t like as much; it will bring in the wrong kind of crowd. Maurizio keeps telling him that’s where the real money is: drunk people after midnight, hungry and alone, and by his calculations, later hours on Friday and Saturday nights mean they can close completely on Mondays, the slowest days. But Antonio doesn’t like this part of the idea, either.
Th
e slow-day customers may be few, but they’re the most loyal. All of this is important. He will teach it to Ryan, and Ryan will carry it through the next forty years.

On his way out, he shakes the hands of the people in line—a young couple new to the neighborhood, the old Irish lady from Forty Acres who reminds him of Giulio’s Helen, a priest from St. Anthony’s with a colored teenage boy he’s trying to save—and they say they’re happy to see him, he’s not around so much anymore. Antonio promises to change that this summer. Did they hear? he asks them. His grandson (they remember him? the handsome one? the smart college boy?) he’s coming back as manager, June 1. And before that, for Easter, the Grassos are all going back together to the Old Country, to the original Al Di Là.

“Won’t that be magical!” says the Irish lady.

“Magical, yes,” Antonio says. “ ‘Magical’ is a good word.”

“
Buon viaggio,
” says the priest.

Th
e colored boy nods.

It will be a good trip, Antonio thinks. If Maddalena could hear him, she’d say, Touch wood, so as he makes his way down Union, he knocks on a shingle of what was once Lamberti’s Bakery. It’s a rainy rush hour, loud with a whistling wind and cars and buses barreling through the slush. He forgot to pick up dinner from the restaurant, but Maddalena won’t mind a simple frittata with onions and some fresh bread. She has no appetite lately, anyway, because of the new pills she’s taking, pills Dr. Ferretti hopes will slow down what’s going on in her brain.

Th
ey sat together in the room with Ferretti, told him about her sisters and what’s like a curse in the family.
Th
en, when she went to the lab to get her blood drawn, Antonio asked him how bad it really was, and all he could say was, “
Th
e pills could help a little, but it will get worse. We just don’t know how long it will take.”

It was Antonio’s idea, not Prima’s, to move up the trip to Easter. He told Prima why, and she said she’d had the same idea all along but couldn’t say the words. She won’t tell her boys about the meeting with Dr. Ferretti, not even about the pills their grandmother will be taking. But neither Prima nor Maddalena knows the half of it, how bad it could get, and how soon. It’s better they don’t know, Antonio thinks, that he and Dr. Ferretti keep it between them, the old-fashioned way.

Maddalena will be happy to hear about Ryan. It will bring her joy to have him here, finishing what they cannot. Antonio will start driving her to the restaurant once or twice a week after Ryan starts and will make her eat a full meal, and their grandson will sit at their table even though he’s working, and they’ll pick out pretty girls for him from the crowd. She’ll like that.

A good year for the Al Di Là, yes—good people, good business, and now Ryan on the way in. For all that, he is proud. But he’d burn the place to the ground for Maddalena—burn the money, too, and all of Union Street if that’s what it took—to give her a moment more.

AT 11:01 THE
rates go down and the news comes on and Antonio walks in from the club and goes straight to the kitchen to fix himself an ice cream cone. Maddalena lies on the sofa in the den with the cordless in the pocket of her nightgown. She hits the buttons on the remote control for channel 4, then Video/TV, then the two little backward arrows, like Frankie taught her, and the phone rings as the tape starts to rewind to the beginning of the story.

“What a stupid show,” she says to Frankie. He’s always a day ahead because he watches it on his lunch break. Maddalena, who’s too busy cleaning or at the dance studio during the day, has to tape the show and watch it late at night, which is good because the story settles her mind.
Th
e nonsense of the actors and actresses, with their crazy love lives and mysteries—their familiar faces, the soft music behind them—helps her sleep. As Frankie talks, the tape starts up, and she hits the Pause button, freezing the face of the pregnancy faker on the screen. Antonio stands in the doorway, licking the three scoops of butter pecan so loud she can hear it all the way across the room. Lately he has been watching the story with her in his leather chair. He can’t keep the names straight and has no idea who’s married and who’s evil and who’s backstabbing who, and she thinks he just likes to look at the pretty, half-naked girls, but that’s all fine with her because at least it’s time they spend together.

“Stupid is right,” Frankie says. “I can’t wait till tomorrow. Friday episodes are the best.” He’s in a good mood. Maddalena can tell.
Th
ere’s a smile in his voice, no clink of ice from the whiskey glass. “You sound good,” he tells her, and she wants to ask, How do I usually sound?

“
Th
ings actually happen on Fridays,” she says, waving at Antonio to get his attention. “Your father just walked in. He says hello. His mouth is full of butter pecan.”

Antonio picks up the kitchen extension. “Hello, Son,” he says, swallowing.

“Another late-night bocce game?”

He licks and slurps. “What else? It’s
Th
ursday.”

“How many games did you win?”

“
Th
ree for three. Me and Tomasso twice as a team.
Th
en eleven to five I beat him one-on-one.”

“I don’t like you driving after three drinks,” Frankie says.

Maddalena breaks in. “He can’t see good during the day, you can imagine at night half-drunk.” She can say this only with Frankie around. Otherwise it becomes a fight. “I tell him, but you think he listens?”

“So I hit a tree,” says Antonio. “Big deal. I’ve lived long enough.”

“What if you hit a little kid? How would you feel then?”

“No little kid’s out at eleven o’clock,” Antonio says. “Use your common sense.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I gave the drinks away, Frankie. I always do. You don’t know me yet? Let’s change the subject. Did you eat?”

“No,” Frankie says, like he’s angry about it. “I sat at my table starving to death, waiting for food that never appeared. Of course I ate.”

Now, so fast, he’s in a bad mood, all because he worries about his father. “It’s just a question,” Maddalena says. “What else are we supposed to ask you about?”

“Nothing,” says Frankie. “I’m sorry. I had macaroni and cheese, some salad, and an orange. Very balanced. For dessert: about twenty chocolate chip cookies dunked in milk.” Again there’s a smile in his voice. “Once I start, I can’t stop.”

“Don’t get fat,” says Maddalena. “It sneaks up on you. You’re not so young anymore.”

“
Th
anks.”

“Macaroni and cheese,” Antonio repeats. “From a box, I bet. Only an American could eat that slop.”

“Like I have time to cook a gourmet Italian meal—”

“What gourmet? It’s so simple, Francesco! A can of tomatoes, some garlic, olive oil, a cut of meat flipped over once in a pan. You learned nothing from me.”

When her husband’s on the phone, everything’s an argument. Maddalena enjoys it more when it’s just her and Frankie.
Th
ey can gossip about Prima and she can hear about his students and the weather in Boston.
Th
en they can agree and agree some more about the Italy trip and how neither of them will go, her most of all, Easter or August or ten years from now, and someone should tell the Buckleys to stop making plans and pretending it’s going to happen. How long can it go on, all this pretending? Sooner or later, someone has to say the truth, and she’s so tired. “Hang up,” she says to her husband. “Go put your pajamas on. I’ve got the story rewinded already.”

“Good night, Son,” Antonio says. “Be careful.”

“Good night, Dad.
You
be careful.”

“I love you. Good-bye.”

“Love you, too, Dad. Bye.”

“Bye, love you, bye. Bye.”

“Love you, bye. Bye.”

Th
is jumble of “I love yous” and good-byes is how they end every one of their calls, every time, all of them—her children, her husband, always the same, whether they’re fighting or not. You can’t say it—“Good-bye, I love you”—enough times.
Th
e jumble would sound funny to someone listening, some American, but there’s only family in the room tonight, no strangers, none of her friends from the dance studio, no neighbors stopping by, so why be embarrassed? You never know if you’ll get the chance to say it—“Good-bye, I love you, good-bye, I love you”—again. You never know when everything will disappear.