The Saint of Lost Things Read online

  “How long until it’s not too soon?” Antonio asks, but he only purses his lips.

  Antonio does not miss work. He has no choice. Mr. Hannagan rests his hand on his shoulder. “It’s a tough test,” he says, then reassures him that doctors know what they’re doing nowadays, that it’s not like before. Before what? Antonio wonders. “Just be grateful we give you insurance,” says Mr. Hannagan.

  The workforce at the Ford plant has more than doubled in the past year, and now Antonio has not only his boss to answer to but a hierarchy of supervisors who parade up and down the assembly line with clipboards. They take turns keeping watch on each man, standing behind him and off to the side, masking the seriousness of their inspection with small talk and dirty jokes. In the meantime they scribble on the clipboards. No wonder Antonio’s performance rating—posted for all to see on the bulletin board above the card-puncher—has slipped from an “Excellent” five stars to a merely “Good” four; he is too busy feigning delight in the supervisors’ cleverness, telling them how funny they are, how he will have to remember to tell their jokes to his brother. His rating will slip further now, in his distraction. Lunchtime provides no relief, as the men are packed into aluminum picnic tables in the musty break room, where the din is so loud that many never remove the earplugs they wear on the line. This week, Antonio sits on the floor in the corner, in the cool draft of the window. Though the radiator is turned off, the place swelters with the throng of bodies.

  Antonio goes from work to the hospital, the hospital to work. He sleeps in the metal rolling chair beside Maddalena’s bed, one arm touching hers at all times. His mother brings him clean clothes in the early morning, and he changes in the men’s room at the other end of the maternity wing. People stop by in the evening: Gianni and his wife, the Fiumas, Ida’s brothers, Father Moravia with his sprinkler and bucket of holy water. Antonio repeats the doctor’s words and sees on their faces the same fear and disbelief the doctor must see on his. On the second day, Renato and Buzzy appear without Cassie or Marcie, having heard the news from Officer Stanley, who heard it from Mario at Mrs. Stella’s. Antonio cannot look them in the eyes. It seems that all of Wilmington, the network of cousins and uncles and strangers from the Old Country, is whispering about Maddalena. They stand around her, shaking their heads, talking across her pale and unresponsive body. Her arms hang at her sides, and her hands are turned outward. She wears a hospital gown tied loosely around her waist and thick stockings up to her knees. Around her neck her Christmas locket, on her finger her wedding ring, on her face an unchanging and impenetrable blankness.

  Three full days pass. Antonio crosses the city from the hospital to Eighth Street. The late-night walk feels familiar, almost instinctual, by now: the screech of distant cars, the milky light from the streetlamps, the men wandering with their dogs.

  It is sometime between midnight and dawn. He makes his way through the dark living room of his father’s house, unplugs the radio, and sets it on his shoulder. It is heavy, unwieldy. He carries it back to the hospital, sets it on the floor beside his wife, connects it to an outlet on the other side of the door, and switches it on.

  The radio gets no reception on any station. Only static. Still he turns up the volume, brushes the hair behind Maddalena’s ear, and climbs into bed beside her. He will stay here until someone tells him to leave.

  The radio does not soothe Antonio. His mind is too thick, and the static makes him only more anxious. He thinks back to that first attack on the Waters house on January 6, now almost five months ago. After Renato cast him out of the church sacristy, he rushed home to Maddalena. He wanted to talk to her, to confess. If he told her about the piles of shit on the step, the shattered windows, the steel nails in the living room, she could absolve him of his guilt, remind him he didn’t cause any of the damage himself. She would understand how he could hate both the colored man and the cruel tricks Renato and Cassie played on him. In the end, she might say that he was helping to teach those people an important lesson. Many times, peering through the curtains at the boys on the curb, she had agreed with him that blacks should have their own place to live, just not a neighborhood where the Italians or Irish had already put down roots. Surely there were vast tracts of America that remained to be settled; why not seek them out, establish a community of their own?

  He found Maddalena sitting up against the headboard, in the dim glow of the bedside lamp, her box of stationery on her lap. Asleep. He shut the door quietly, removed her reading glasses and set them on the nightstand. Her pen had slipped out of her fingers and leaked a stain the size of a dime onto the ivory sheets. Above her lips was an angry red pimple she must have recently squeezed. When did her face change? he thought. Her cheeks, neck, even her ears seemed fleshier. Older, but no less beautiful. Her lips were parted slightly, as if she’d fallen asleep in the middle of something she wanted to say.

  He switched off the radio and took the box of stationery from her lap. Cara Mamma, her letter began. She had written about Giulio Fabbri, the accordion player, crying for his mother in front of the Christmas Eve guests. His song had broken her heart. It had made her feel like an orphan. It had made her want to run down the stairs, throw her arms around the man, and tell him “I understand you.” Since she’d come to America she had been hiding her sadness from everyone, “even you, Mamma,” but the accordion player did not let her hide anymore. She felt that if she didn’t stop hiding, she would no longer be able to get up in the morning. “My only happiness comes when I think of my baby,” she wrote. “If it weren’t for my baby, I would drink a bottle of poison.”

  Antonio read this sentence many times. If it weren’t for my baby, I would drink a bottle of poison. He turned the page over. She had added to the letter every night for two weeks and marked each section with the date. His name did not appear anywhere. Did he matter so little to her? She apologized for her state of mind and said she would probably never have the courage to mail these ugly words. That night she had been writing about the unforgiving cold, the taking down of the lights on Union Street, and then, presumably, she’d drifted off.

  Antonio had thought of the bewildered faces and the snickers in his living room as Giulio Fabbri played “Mamma.” He had felt embarrassed for the man, bleeding in front of a room full of strangers, but Maddalena had found it moving; she’d suffered along with him but could not turn to her husband for comfort.

  She stirred. “You’re back,” she said, so quietly he could barely hear her, and rubbed her eyes. Sweat beaded on her forehead and matted her hair, though the air was cool. Frigid, actually. She kicked off the covers. Having a baby must confuse women’s bodies more than Antonio understood.

  “I was thinking about our new house,” he told her, though that had not been on his mind at the moment, and she would probably not remember anything he said. “I like the ones across from Wana-maker’s, up on the hill.”

  She slid down from the headboard onto her side. Her nightgown rode up her thigh, revealing her supple legs. “Those are nice,” she said.

  “We don’t have quite enough yet, but it can be done. Somehow.” “Anything can be done,” she said, dreamily. The pillow muffled her voice. Then: “Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “I smell whiskey.”

  “I was drunk. I stopped by Mrs. Stella’s.”

  “That’s good,” she said. Still her eyes were closed. “You should be closer to your brother.”

  “He’s a pain in the neck,” said Antonio, and laughed. “But who isn’t.”

  They were quiet for a while. Then she said, “Do what you want, with everything.” Her face was turned away from him. “The money, the job. I don’t care. I’m not going to bother you anymore.”

  He stroked her hair. “What do you mean by that?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “The city’s not safe,” Antonio said. “It’s not like it used to be. We’ll raise our children somewhere better. When I first came here, you could walk anywhere at
night and no one would bother you. You could play bocce in the street at three o’clock in the afternoon and not see a car for hours.” He shook his head. “Those days are over.”

  “That’s the village,” Maddalena said. “You want empty streets, go back there.”

  He caressed her foot, her ankle, the length of her calf up to her knee. Still she kept her face turned away. Her chest rose and fell. “I wish we could,” he said. “For you more than me.”

  “You feel guilty,” she said. “You only talk like this when you feel guilty.”

  He sat there a while, his head throbbing, his hand limp on her foot. It felt cool as marble, though the rest of her body burned in a near-fever, and patches of sweat had formed where her nightgown clung to her skin. He had questions for her. Explanations. He wanted to bury his head in her chest and ask forgiveness. But there would be plenty of time for that, he thought, and let her sleep.

  10

  A Concerned Neighbor

  AT DINARDO’S, JULIAN CHOOSES a cheerful prearranged vase of pink, blue, and yellow flowers. Before he can ask, Fran pulls out the white lilies and replaces them with tulips. Maddalena is in danger, but still alive, and so there can be no suggestion of death, not even between florist and customer. Fran DiNardo has known Maddalena all seven years she has lived on this block of Eighth Street. Julian has known her only the past few months, a long enough time to start a friendship, too short for it to end.

  “Never a dull moment, is there?” Fran says. “Good for business, bad for my heart.” She is a short woman of indeterminate age with a leathery face and a voice deepened by years of smoking. Never married, she’s worked in her father’s shop for as long as Julian can remember. He has never seen Fran without her green apron and an assortment of rubber bands around her wrist. In fact, he has never seen her outside this damp, humid store. She and Julian have a standing appointment here on Saturdays, when he picks up the fresh flowers for his parents’ graves. Surprised to see him on a Wednesday morning, she buzzes around like she would for a new customer, spritzing the jungle of tall leafy plants that crowd the floor and the blooms that droop from the hanging pots. When she cranks open the front windows to let in the fresh spring air, Julian notices the muscles in her forearm.

  “When Signora Grasso wakes up, tell her I made something for her,” says Fran. “Let me show you.”

  From the top shelf of the refrigerator she takes out a small white box. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, is a delicate spray of violets attached to a plastic hair clip. She lifts it carefully and holds it up to her ear. “I don’t know if people wear violets in their hair,” she says. “But they’re her favorite flower. And I had a few left over.”

  Julian looks at the tulips, irises and astra-somethings waiting for him on the counter.

  “She’ll love yours, too, don’t worry,” Fran says. She closes up the box, affixes a gold seal to the flap, and places it back in the refrigerator. “Have I steered you wrong before?”

  “Never,” he says. He walks to the register, takes out his money clip, and starts counting. Sun streams in from the skylights, forcing him to squint.

  “You’re in a hurry,” says Fran, crossing the room. “I understand.” Without looking up from the numbers she punches into the cash machine, she says, “You know Signora Grasso from the restaurant?”

  Julian hesitates. “Yes and no,” he says, hoping that will end it. But Fran looks at him expectantly.

  How can he explain the strange course he and Maddalena have taken? On Christmas Eve, he sang a song that moved her. Upstairs, through the wall between bedroom and bathroom, he felt a certain unspoken connection to her. Over the past few months, she and Antonio visited him many evenings at his house, where they talked and played records. Once or twice a week Julian has met Maddalena and Ida at the bus stop, accompanied them home, and stayed for dinner. “She is my friend,” he would say, if it were not so peculiar for a single man advanced in age to befriend a married woman in her twenties. Instead he says, “Franco Grasso worked with my father. I’m just paying my respects.”

  “Ah,” says Fran. “May he rest in peace. A good man, your father. I always said so. “She hands him his change. “See you again Saturday, yes?”

  All morning the flowers sit wilting on the windowsill in Julian’s kitchen. He lifts the shade and changes the water, but they refuse to resurrect themselves. He should have brought them straight to the hospital for the early visiting hours. Instead he stopped at home for a glass of lemonade and twenty minutes of walking in and out of the rooms with the curtains drawn. He cannot bear the idea that his friend is in the sort of coma Mario described: her face pale and frozen and fearful, as if she’d seen a ghost the moment her body shut down. But Julian is already two days late with his respects. If Maddalena wakes and learns that all these strangers have come to visit, but not Julian, she might never forgive him.

  He arrives at her room just after seven in the evening. Standing in the hallway, he can see only a pair of bare feet at the end of the bed. He is grateful when Mario appears beside him.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he says, his hand on his shoulder. He leads him in.

  Maddalena lies there in a lifeless trance: eyes closed, lips parted, chin lifted as if about to call for help. Julian draws in a breath and looks away. His hands tighten around the vase.

  Antonio sits in the chair beside his wife, slumped so far down that his shoulders are even with the arms. He rises slowly to greet Julian, takes the flowers, and sets them on a table with the others. No one has brought violets.

  “I am so sorry,” Julian says to Antonio, and then, when he remembers the baby, “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t—” Julian says, and holds out his hands. “In this kind of situation—”

  “Nobody knows what to say,” says Mario. “That’s why it’s so quiet in here.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” says Antonio. “We just wait.”

  Julian has always felt discomfort around Antonio, as if the man secretly disapproved of him and was only waiting for a good reason to admit it. At his most optimistic, Julian believes that Antonio cares so little about him that he has no opinion one way or the other. Even in these awful circumstances, it still concerns Julian what Antonio will say about him after he leaves.

  Mario offers him one of the chairs that line the side of the bed opposite Antonio. Julian sits and crosses his legs. He wears dress pants, a collared shirt that’s too tight around his neck, a dark-blue tie, and thin socks that don’t smell (as far as he can tell), though he doesn’t remember the last time he washed them. The only sound in the room is the humming of the enormous machine attached to Maddalena. Mario slowly and silently taps his foot. Antonio’s eyes flutter, fight, and close.

  What good is he doing here? Julian wonders. Can Maddalena sense him, and if so, does she need his panic hovering over her? How useless they all become—the men on both sides of her bed, the doctors, the apple-cheeked nurses—once God puts His hands to her throat.

  Julian notices the radio on the floor. Should he have brought his accordion? Maybe one of his songs would wake her. Something happy—“Funiculì, Funiculà,” or another of her favorites, “Terra Straniera.” Maybe she needs the music to guide her back from that place between life and death—not quite purgatory, but some sort of foggy cave God puts you in as a test. Julian believes in this place. If you want badly enough to live, you run through the maze of tunnels until you find your way out. If you want to die, like his mother in her exhaustion and his father in his loneliness, you simply lie down in the puddles and mist.

  He wonders if Maddalena knows that the child she’s longed for all these months lies safe and healthy in the other room, and if that knowledge alone might be enough to bring her back. Should he ask to see the baby? What is the proper length of time for him to sit in this room—an hour? Until the next visitor? He is not family. He has no rightful place here. Yet he feels he knows Maddalena better than any of
these people.

  Twenty minutes pass. Julian pleads in his mind for Antonio and Mario to leave and give him some time alone with his friend. He needs just a moment, long enough to whisper something in her ear. No improper confession, no “I love you” for the nurses to giggle over, though he has, indeed, come to love Maddalena in his own way. He has news she’s been anticipating since that night almost four months ago when she and Antonio first showed up at his house, and he longs to share it with her, to see her cover her face with her hands in happy astonishment. He was waiting to tell her until he was certain, but now wishes he’d had more faith. He gives her a quick glance, thinks, You’ll be so proud of me, and lowers his head again.

  MADDALENA AND ANTONIO’S first visit came at eight o’clock on a Friday evening in mid-January. Julian lay in bed, the covers up to his chin, when he heard the bell. Through the curtains he watched them waiting on the stoop: she in a long coat, her belly not yet visible, carrying a tray of cookies; he in a black derby and leather gloves, a bottle tucked under his arm. They stomped their feet against the cold and peered into the living room windows.

  Julian put on the pair of pants he’d thrown across the radiator an hour before, then grabbed a sweater from the trunk in his closet.

  “Surprise!” Maddalena said, when he opened the door.

  Julian was suspicious. Since Christmas, Mario had been begging him to return to Mrs. Stella’s. After the daily telephone calls failed to convince him, the afternoon drop-ins began. Soon he grew hostile. “You promised me!” he’d shouted from the street, like a lover, as Julian pulled the curtains. Had Mario now gone so far as to send his brother and his pretty blonde sister-in-law to make his case?