The Saint of Lost Things Read online

Antonio rests his hand on Maddalena’s shoulder and, carefully, bends to kiss her. Now that he’s made his speech, his hunger returns. Soon he will sit at the table like a king and have the waiters bring him a feast. “I didn’t embarrass you, did I?” he asks.

  Maddalena shakes her head. She wears the new perfume he gave her for Christmas, her first gift paid for with his own money. If he could, he’d buy her ten new dresses, walk her through Wanamaker’s without looking at the price tags. He’d drive her to New York City and spend the night in a hotel. Someday, someday.

  “Fifty-nine!”

  “You covered your face,” Antonio says. “I thought—I’m sorry to call so much attention.”

  “I wasn’t embarrassed,” says Maddalena. She looks at him. There is lipstick on her teeth, and she’s missing an earring. “I was just crying a little.”

  Behind her, the throwing of confetti. A group of old ladies forms a circle, as if for a tarantella. They lift their arms above their heads, march around a table, and start counting down from ten.

  “I was proud of you,” Maddalena says.

  19

  Salta!

  ON SUNDAYS IN THE SUMMER, the Al Di Là is closed and the family drives to Wildwood. Soon they won’t all be able to fit into the Chevy, but for now they make it work: the men and little Nunzia in the front seat; Maddalena, Prima, Ida, and Nina in the back. When Antonio or Mario can’t get away—because, even on its day off, the restaurant is needier and more starved for attention than a baby—Julian comes along. On the days everyone can make it, Julian follows in Helen’s brother’s car, and Maddalena spends most of the trip checking the rearview mirror, thinking how strange it looks for a woman to be driving a man around. Mamma Nunzia always stays home, unwilling to miss church to make the early start to the Jersey shore. She uses the day to cook the tomato sauce for the week, change the linens and tend the garden. If she feels up to it, she will take a few minutes to sit on the porch with Signora Fiuma.

  This summer, 1956, is the first without Papà Franco. One night last fall, at dinner, he suddenly turned his bowl of wedding soup into his lap and slumped in his chair. His lower lip drooped to one side. His eyes stayed open and his heart was beating, but he did not move. The ambulance took him to St. Francis Hospital, where he lay pale and unresponsive. Though the doctor offered little hope he would survive the stroke, no one believed him. They had seen what happened to Maddalena. They had faith. Over four nights at St. Francis, they brought his favorite dishes for when he woke: polenta with butter and sausage, fried eggplant, lasagna with extra hard-boiled eggs. The covered dishes sat untouched on the win-dowsill. On the fifth night, he was gone.

  Papà Franco had loved the beach. The summer before, he hadn’t missed a single one of these Sunday trips. Nunzia would ride on his lap, and he’d point out buildings as they crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge. “I helped build that,” he’d say. “In 1932, when I first came over.” Or, “An Italian owns that tall one; can you believe it?” He never went in the water—the motion of the waves upset his stomach, and he couldn’t swim—but he liked to sit on a bench on the boardwalk and watch the girls. He’d smile at the pretty ones, ask their names, and tell them he was the famous Italian singer Ezio Pinza. When the wind kicked up, he’d take out a comb and run it through his thick white hair. “Who needs money, with a free show like this?” he’d say to his sons, when they came to get him at the end of the day. “God knew what he was doing.”

  The beach is crowded today, the first Sunday after the Fourth of July. Wildwood seems to grow more popular each week, mostly with teenagers, and Maddalena wonders if they should try the Delaware beaches sometime. Or they could try Atlantic City again, though in recent years its beauty has faded, and the once-thrilling horses diving at the Steel Pier now just make her sad. Maddalena does not enjoy crowds now that she can no longer fit into a regular bathing suit. She is forced to wear this polka-dot tent, with its high waist and long, flowing pleats, to cover her enormous middle.

  Ida wears a suit that matches Maddalena’s, though she is two months further along. She spreads an old white sheet on the sand, and Mario weighs it down with shoes and a cooler. He takes out six wineglasses from the pillowcases in which they’ve been wrapped for the journey and starts pouring. He waves hello to an older couple whom they have seen here many times before. Maddalena arranges her and Antonio’s sheet beside Mario and Ida’s, so that they are between Helen and Julian.

  Giulio, Maddalena keeps forgetting to say. She will never get used to it. Helen has convinced him to change his name back to the one his parents chose, as if that will help soothe his heart. If Helen marries him, Maddalena thinks, then maybe she will have the right to suggest such a thing. Though Helen hasn’t admitted it out loud, she’s one of those women who believes her opinion matters as much as any man’s, and that she’s as aware as Julian of the state of the world. When the beach conversations turn to politics or integration or an article in the Sunday newspaper, she’s the first to make a judgment. And Julian, who once argued with Antonio over the smallest point, never disagrees with her. Maddalena has seen him glance at Helen before taking a stand on an issue and, when she disapproved, immediately take it back. Look at him now: “You’re right, darling,” he says, about the ending of The Searchers, which they saw last weekend at the Queen. “I didn’t think of it that way.” All Maddalena can do is shake her head.

  I miss you, she wants to tell him. I’ve always had a husband, but you were my first friend in this country. She wants to ask him about this beach: how it got its name, how many miles it stretches, the history of New Jersey compared to Delaware and Pennsylvania. She wants to show him the list of Prima’s first words, which she keeps in the top drawer of her nightstand. But he must think her silly now, her and her questions. So instead she says, “John Wayne must be a millionaire, all those movies he makes.”

  For lunch they pass around fresh bread from Lamberti’s—the exclusive baker for the Al Di Là—mortadella and prosciutto from Angelo’s, and a large chunk of parmigiano. For dessert there are peaches and watermelon, and a dried-out cake from Helen that is some sort of Irish specialty. They dunk the peaches in the wine, the cake in a thermos of American coffee.

  The outdoors, the beach especially, works magic on Prima. If only Maddalena had discovered this earlier in the child’s life, she might have spared herself and Antonio many sleepless nights. But she’d discovered it only last year, just after Prima’s first birthday, when she’d nursed her on the porch on the first humid evening of the summer. Indoors, Prima always had trouble feeding, but the moment Maddalena stepped into the fresh air of the porch, she’d relaxed. Quickly Maddalena learned that, when the baby woke in the middle of the night, only a walk outside under the grape arbor, or up and down the sidewalk, could calm her. On the beach last summer, Prima never cried when the wind whipped sand at her face; she simply shut her eyes and waited while Maddalena wiped the little granules from her cheek. Now that she has learned to walk, she is fearless. If Maddalena does not watch her at every moment, she will chase a seagull or another child or nothing at all into the waves.

  This kind of work—the protection of Prima, the changing and washing of her diapers, the rubbing of cream on her rashes—has come as easily to Maddalena as sewing or greeting guests at the Al Di Là. Those other jobs, though, do not fill her. Only Prima fills her. She can get both of her little hands in her mouth at once and nibble them until Prima laughs so hard the tears come. Her fingers are plump and soft, her nails like perfect seashells. How could Maddalena have thought she had any purpose on earth other than to mother this girl and the children who will come after her? Let the men make the money, she thinks. Let the abandoned Russian girls model dresses in Philadelphia. When Maddalena leaves the Golden Hem each night, she does not miss the angry thrum of the sewing machines, or the musty air, or the ache in her fingers. What’s to long for in Mr. Gold’s barking, his frequent competitions, or even the bus ride she once loved, when she has this littl
e miracle to feast on at home?

  Antonio swims out far, too far for Maddalena’s comfort. She tries not to panic when she loses sight of him. He teases her by staying underwater for many minutes, swimming off, then reappearing on the opposite side of the rocks that divide the two ends of this stretch of beach. When he reaches the other side, he jumps out of the water, calls her name, and opens his arms for her to join him. Maddalena shakes her head. Like Papà Franco, she has never liked the ocean. She stays on the edge of the surf, cooling her toes, letting Prima pull her along.

  Antonio walks carefully toward her over the carpet of broken shells in the sandbar. No matter how many times she has seen him in his blue bikini, or less, she still has to turn away when his body presents itself. She cannot look directly at it—the hair on his upper chest, his long muscular arms, the bulge between his legs that gives everything away—and risk the thrill that pulses through her. Someone will see it on her face. Since Prima, her husband’s beauty has had this effect. Since Prima, she has noticed that, at thirty-five, Antonio can pass for any of these American boys around her, wrestling and hoisting one another onto their shoulders. Only the slight recession in the hair above his forehead, and, if you look close, the delicate crease in the skin between his eyebrows, suggests he might not be twenty years old.

  She hands him his towel and stares at the ground as he bends to dry his legs first, then his stomach, chest, arms, and finally his face and hair. “How’s my angel?” he says, and lifts Prima high in the air. He holds her before him, spins her around, and nuzzles his face in hers. “Never says boo, this one,” he says, handing her back. He glances over at Nunzia and Nina, who rarely let anyone but Ida or Mario touch them. “Her cousins could take a lesson.”

  “We got lucky,” Maddalena says. “For now. We’ll see in a few years.”

  “Does she need a change?” Antonio asks. He holds onto the ends of his towel, which is draped around his neck. “After you do it, I can take her up to the little pool.”

  “She’s fine,” says Maddalena. “You should relax. It’s your day off.” She smiles at him. “Go have some wine before Helen finishes the bottle.”

  He wraps one arm around her waist and lays a hand on her stomach. “You’re OK in this sun?” he says. “You don’t feel dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “You ate enough?”

  “As much as I could,” she says.

  “Good.” He pulls her closer, squeezing Prima between them, though she makes no fuss.

  “You can’t worry all the time,” she says. “Dr. Barone says there’s a good chance—”

  “Dr. Barone,” he says, and shakes his head. “Because he’s right so much—with Papà, with you the first time. I can’t listen to doctors anymore. They make everything up as they go along.” This is how he gets whenever there is talk of the new baby: his face flushed, his eyes wide. There is no reassuring him. “I won’t stop worrying for one second,” he says. “Not until it’s over. Not even then.”

  “I’m not worried,” Maddalena says. She has told this to Antonio many times, since the day they learned she was to have another child, but it is not quite the truth. She senses danger every time the child moves inside her. At any moment she expects the slash of pain, the fall to her knees, the long darkness. For comfort, she turns to Fortunata, the woman in Il Sogno della Principessa, which she has finally finished. Fortunata always believes that God will protect her, even at the end of the book, when she learns she is not a princess after all. Fortunata comes from poor, ordinary parents, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn’t need money, or the castle, or the jeweled robes so cruelly stripped from her by the barbaric guards. She has her young son, and the memory of the slain prince who loved her, and God’s hand in hers as she makes her way alone and barefoot into the thick woods. Maddalena has recounted this story to Mamma Nunzia, who believes in this same sort of God, even in her grief. If she told anyone else, Antonio especially, that this story soothed her, he would think her silly. Ida would give her a blank stare. Helen would laugh. Only Julian, if she could reach him, might understand.

  Antonio releases her, gives Prima’s cheeks a gentle pinch, then walks over to his family. He can sit still for maybe ten minutes, and then he will need to walk the boardwalk or find a group of young men with whom to kick around a soccer ball. Used to be, when they took trips to Atlantic City, he’d beg her to play in the waves with him. The one time she agreed, he tickled her thighs underwater and squeezed her behind and put his hand between her legs. She felt no desire for him then. Afraid and embarrassed, she ran out of the water in tears.

  Now she walks up and down the length of the beach, smiling politely at the people waving and making funny faces at Prima. She tries to eavesdrop on conversations and pick up new words. Her English is better than it was when she first started at the Golden Hem, but after her weeks in the hospital she forgot much of what she learned. She has made no new friends and speaks mainly to Ida in Italian. At the Al Di Là, her job is to play the part of the young immigrant from the village, to hide the American in her. Sometimes the customers ask her just to talk, say whatever comes to mind in her native language, and she stands there at the table telling stories about Santa Cecilia, though they don’t understand a word.

  “You are so vain,” a woman says to her friend, as Maddalena passes. It does not sound like a compliment. “What a travesty,” says a man, his face blocked by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and shakes his bald head. She used to know that word, Inquirer. Philadelphia is hard enough, with its strange phs. She will never get used to how it looks, no matter how many times she has taken the bus into the city. What do Americans have against the f? In Italian, every letter sounds the same wherever you put it.

  She stops to watch two couples standing on the edge of the rocks. The women seem to be in their late twenties, the men quite a bit older. They are having some sort of argument. Maddalena walks up the sandbar. The men speak clear English, but the women have an accent. They wear tight one-piece bathing suits with frilly skirts that don’t cover their knees. They fold their arms across their chests, shivering.

  “Salta!” says one of the men, and claps his girlfriend on the back. “Salta!” he repeats. Then, to make sure: “Jump, right? Salta is jump?”

  “Sì!” says the girlfriend. “Ma abbiamo paura! We are afraid!”

  Italians. Maddalena smiles, looks closer. There is something familiar about the women. She has seen their faces before. On the bus? In a photograph? Though plain, the women are pretty enough to be actresses. Maybe they have escaped New York City for the weekend to join their boyfriends here.

  Suddenly one of the men—the bigger one, who has a tattoo on his forearm—grabs his girlfriend from behind and lifts her up by the waist. The rocks look slippery, and, out of instinct, Maddalena grips Prima’s hand more tightly. The woman kicks her arms and laughs as the man carries her toward the edge.

  “No!” she screams, and now many heads on the beach turn to watch them.

  “In you go!” the man says, and tosses her into the water.

  Before her boyfriend can do the same, the other woman leaps off the edge. Midair, she calls out “Silvia!” and immediately Maddalena realizes who they are. Silvia and Sandra Leone. Vito’s sisters, who moved to Philadelphia twenty years ago. They resemble him: the shape of their heads, their skinny arms and legs. One of their faces is Vito’s; the other took after their mother. Though they could not possibly recognize Maddalena, she turns and rushes from the sandbar, pulling Prima along. She stops to look back only once, to watch them splash in the water, happy, it seems, with their American men. She wishes she could go up to them. “We come from the same village,” she would say, and, lowering her head, tell them her name. They’d wrap their arms around her, marveling at their great luck in finding a sister in America. They’d insist that she visit them some Sunday on Market Street. They’d ask questions about her family, and then, all at once, their faces would go dark. They’d remember the story of t
heir brother’s first engagement, that it was Maddalena who’d traded his heart for a trip across the ocean, and the happy reunion would end.

  “How long until we go?” Maddalena says, when she finds her family among the patchwork of blankets.

  “I’m ready now,” says Mario.

  “What’s wrong?” Antonio asks Maddalena. “You don’t look right.”

  “I’m just tired all of a sudden,” she says.

  “We’re going to stay a bit longer,” Julian says, his eyes on Helen. “Right?”

  The hours have gone by quickly. It is pleasant to get away from the city for a while, and Maddalena is always disappointed, even today, when it is time to pack their things. Still, she enjoys the ride home through the New Jersey woods, those miles thick with tall pines and the smell of campfires. The girls will fall asleep across her lap, and allow the grown-ups to discuss why Julian still hasn’t proposed to Helen, and speculate that it is because he is waiting for Helen to propose to him. Mamma Nunzia will have Sunday dinner waiting for them when they get home, and at seven o’clock they will all gather in the living room to hear the Italian radio program.

  As they walk to the car, Antonio starts in on their usual game. “All the way down there,” he says to Maddalena, pointing toward the dunes. “With the sunflowers in the front. That’s the one we’ll buy.”

  “The porch is too small,” Maddalena says. “Look further down—the gray one with the veranda.”

  “You know I don’t like gray,” says Antonio. “It’s depressing.”

  Since he opened the Al Di Là, her husband has become a talker. Not only at the beach, but everywhere: in the morning before he leaves for work, in bed when she is trying to sleep. He walks her back to Eighth Street on Saturday nights, after the dinner rush ends and he no longer needs her to charm the customers. They take the long way home, stopping every few blocks to lean against the streetlamps and gossip about the regulars and the cooks and Bruno the waiter. He tells her his vision of their future, and the light around him changes. A house in Wildwood, a Cadillac, a grandfather clock, Catholic school for the children—they will have all this and more, he says, and Maddalena has come to believe him.