The Saint of Lost Things Read online

  “Whatever that means,” Antonio says. “So now I have to pay the whole bill myself and pretend Mario changed his mind. Just to keep in good with a boss at a stupid going-nowhere job.” He turns to Maddalena. “You know, if I ran a place like Mrs. Stella’s, we’d get one complaint only: not enough tables. Or: the food’s so good, I can’t eat at home anymore. Sometimes I wonder how my brother got so lucky.”

  Before he can start another story, Maddalena takes his hand. “You don’t wonder why I waited up?” she asks.

  He looks at her. “You missed me?” he says, and laughs. “You thought, ‘I want to hear that story about the blowtorch again?’” Then his face changes. “Nothing happened, did it?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Something good. Mario is not the only lucky one.” She squeezes his hand, guides it to her stomach, and nods. “We don’t have to worry anymore.”

  A flash of joy, the corners of his mouth in an immediate smile. His eyes brighten. The room, too, seems to fill with light.

  Then his face freezes. He narrows his gaze at her and sits up against the wrought-iron bars of the headboard. “Now?” he asks.

  She hesitates. “I’m almost sure.” She starts to recount the signs, the most recent one first. The bathroom. Gloria. The lullaby. But they sound silly, unconvincing. She stops before she gets to the deer.

  He turns his face toward the opposite wall. For a long time, he does not move or speak. Maddalena focuses on the birthmark on the back of his neck, a pink blotch in the shape of an almond. When he’s angry, the blotch turns red.

  He is angry.

  “You’re my wife for seven years, and no baby,” he says. “Then you go to work for the Jew and poof! there’s a baby now?”

  Maddalena pulls the sheet up to her waist. “What do you—” she starts to ask, then stops herself when she realizes the implication. She almost laughs, but Antonio’s face has gone dark. “I think I’m more relaxed,” she says, remembering what her mother told her in her letters: every nail you bite is one more month without a child.

  Antonio does not wrap his arms around her the moment he hears the news. He does not throw open the window and sing to God and wake the neighbors. He does not run downstairs to get the bottle of spumante they have kept in the refrigerator for just this occasion. Instead he stands in his shirtsleeves and underwear and paces from the bed to the window, hands on his hips. “I have to think,” he says. “I wasn’t ready for this. Not tonight.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says. “How can you not be ready?”

  He puts his fingers to his temples as if to stop a sharp pain.

  “Whatever idea you have, I can tell you right now it’s crazy.” She laughs. “If this is one of your jokes—”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  “But it doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re right,” he says, standing against the far wall. “It doesn’t at all. For so many years we want a baby, and there is no baby. Then, just when we give up, when we think, ‘maybe it’s not meant to be,’ and we start to dream of something else, a different kind of life, here comes the baby.”

  He has not slapped her. In fact, he has kept his distance and spoken barely above a whisper. But she feels as though his hand has struck her face.

  “I didn’t know you gave up,” she says. “What kind of life are you dreaming about? What kind of life doesn’t have a child in it?”

  “Never mind,” he says. “What’s done is done.” He goes to the drapes, stands on his toes, and pulls out the wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band. He divides the bills into stacks on the dresser. “All this—we’ll need every dollar—more—”

  “That’s what we decided,” says Maddalena. “Right? We save enough for the baby, and then whatever is left we use on a house.”

  He counts the stacks again. “I don’t remember anything being decided,” he says. “Except now I decide you’ll never step foot in that factory again. You’re staying home like a normal wife. Ida will tell the Jew tomorrow.”

  Until this threat to keep her from the Golden Hem, Maddalena has never considered that she might miss it. She thinks of the competition, which Ida will surely lose without her. Then, evenly, she says, “I have to work.” She looks up at him. “Ida needs me. And we need the money. And I’m good at it.”

  He stands motionless at the foot of the bed, looking down at the length of her body the way he looks at meat when she under-cooks it. Antonio likes everything burnt through, with a charcoal crust, and when it doesn’t turn out right, he glares at it until it is taken away.

  “Tell me what kind of life you’re dreaming about,” she says, but he does not respond. His gaze pins her in place. “Talk to me.” After a while, she adds, “Please.”

  But Antonio, like most men, fights best with silence. In recent years, Maddalena has worked up the courage to scream at him, call him disgraziato and slam the door just as he approached it. She has locked herself for hours in this bedroom and cried. She has even caught the shoe he pitched at her from across the kitchen, thrown it back at his face, shaken her fists; but she has never won the silence game once he began it. She has only outlasted it. And now it begins again.

  He puts on his pants. His belt jingles. He puts on his shoes without sitting down, and keeps his back to her. He kicks a pillow out of the way to get to the door.

  “Where are you going this time?” she says. “Back to that dirty pizzeria?”

  She closes her eyes and listens to his footsteps on the stairs and the slam of the front screen door. She hurries to the window to see which direction he’s walking, but she sees only the two colored boys. They have taken their usual spot on the curb, where Antonio sat not long before, and pass a cigarette back and forth. She waits at the window until it grows too cold, then returns to the bed and wraps herself in the covers. It is past midnight. In five hours, she will have to rise and dress for work.

  If she were back in Santa Cecilia, if this joy had happened there, her mother and sisters would be sitting around her, weighing down the bed, not letting her sleep. They would put on some music. Teresa would feed her beef from her husband’s butcher shop, for strength; Celestina would say how much better men liked their wives once they got fat. Her mother would refuse to admit she’d felt pain delivering any of her seven children, and remind Maddalena of the beauty of bringing life into the world. Now her mother and sisters exist only in letters, in the few photographs they send after weddings and baptisms.

  She reaches over and switches off the lamp. What good do comparisons do her—the new country, the old; his family, hers? She is cursed with comparisons. She has one country now, one family. She does not even have memories anymore, only these fantasies of what might have been if Antonio had never come for her. It no longer matters that she had another man—a boy really—in Santa Cecilia, someone who loved her and whom she loved in return. It no longer matters that, had she chosen him, she would not be here, alone in a bed by a drafty window, longing to hear his footsteps on the stairs. She has prayed to God to wipe her mind clean of the boy and every memory of the village—to give her a moment, at least, of rest—but so far He has not answered. Now, maybe, the child will help.

  As husbands go, she reminds herself, she is lucky with Antonio. He works hard. He does not beat her, unlike many husbands she knows here and in the Old Country. Once this storm ends, he will make a devoted father. He knows about things of which she is ignorant: politics, geography, the price of electricity and heating oil. She cannot even write a check or remember their phone number. Most of the time, Antonio has a calming, confident voice, which he frequently uses to brag about her beauty. Just last week his friend Gianni described Maddalena as an Italian Marilyn Monroe, and Antonio had blushed with pride. (She has to admit a resemblance, in the hair and face at least; God has not been as generous with the chest.) Then later, after too much wine, Antonio called her “my Marilyn” and grabbed her by the waist as she cleared the dishes. “Don’t go back to Hollywood, Sign
ora Monroe,” he begged, and buried his face in the small of her back. She stood trapped at the table with her hands full, smiling, and shook her head at his family gathered around them. “Stay with me in this humble house.”

  She calls that evening to mind, then, here in her satin nightgown: shimmying free of his hands on her hips, her quick flirtatious look back, catching his eye as she turned the corner into the kitchen. She replays this scene until sleep takes her, and when she wakes she will join in the silence game for as long as she can bear it.

  ANTONIO MOVES SOUNDLESSLY through the house. He does not insist that Maddalena stay home from work. He does not say anything to her at all. She sets out his clothes as usual, but does not ask him which shirt he prefers. He dresses and undresses without a glance in her direction. With the rest of the family they act as if nothing has changed, and for two days no one seems to notice the wall of ice between them.

  “When did you plan to tell me?” Ida asks Maddalena on the third day, as the bus turns off Union, and suddenly everything is out in the open. “I’m not the smartest lady in the world, but I think I’d notice sooner or later. Maybe when you started stealing my maternity clothes?”

  “I’m sorry,” Maddalena says. “How did you—”

  “Last night Antonio went to the restaurant and kept Mario at the bar for an hour, talking and asking questions. Then this morning, when you were downstairs, he asked me, out of nowhere: ‘How tall is this Jew boss of yours? Where does he live?’ He asked me how much he talks to you, and I said ‘not much.’ He thinks if he asks me enough times I will slip up, that I know what’s going on but won’t tell him.”

  “What’s going on,” says Maddalena, with a roll of her eyes. “Nothing is going on! When I tell him that, he looks right through me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can’t stop him from thinking something so crazy.”

  Ida shakes her head.

  “He sends me to work, but doesn’t trust me,” Maddalena continues. “And Papà is on his side, I’m sure. He always thinks the same as his son, and even if Mamma Nunzia disagrees, she can do nothing. So I’m all alone.”

  “You’re not alone,” says Ida. “You just don’t know what it’s like for him. When he sees his son or his daughter, he will change. You wouldn’t believe it was the same Mario before I had my Nunzia. I was like one of his hats—if you didn’t remind him he had one, he’d get all wet. Believe me, sooner or later Antonio will talk to you again, and you’ll remember the days when he didn’t talk, and you’ll think, that wasn’t so bad after all. He’s just embarrassed now.”

  Maddalena removes her coat and settles it on her lap. She is sweating in the overheated bus and the glare of the window seat. The morning is bright and cold, and the last leaves of the season cling to the roadside trees. The frost crusted along the bottom edge of the windows begins to melt.

  When they reach her stop, Gloria enters with another large package addressed to her mother in Cuba. She takes a seat across from them, looks quizzically at Maddalena and asks, “Tutto bueno?”

  “Sì, sì,” Maddalena says, with a wave of her hand. She nods toward Ida. “She knows.”

  “Finally!” Gloria says. “It’s bad luck to hide happy news.”

  Ida turns her back to Gloria. “He wrote to us from Genoa,” she continues in Italian, “when you were on your honeymoon. He said that when you finally came to live with us, you’d be carrying the baby you made in the Old Country. He wanted the baby more than the wife—excuse me for saying the truth. And he still believed there was a baby, even when you stayed skinny. He told everyone at his work. For six years they’ve been teasing him, ‘Antonio, where is this son of yours? You still hiding your daughter from us?’ Men get embarrassed easy; you’re smart enough to know that.”

  “But do I know how to have a baby?” Maddalena says. “Do I know why God waited this long? I think, ‘It’s because you don’t like it enough when you’re in bed together,’ so I try to like it more, but I’m not—” She stops, sure she’s said too much, not sure she means it. On Ida’s face is the look of someone not used to hearing ugly things. In English, Maddalena says: “I love my husband, Ida. I can’t love him more than I already do.”

  “Of course.”

  Maddalena learned early on that, though Ida is her one sister-in-law and closest friend in this new country, she cannot rely on her for comfort. She can tell Ida half, at most, of what she feels, and hope her dim mind prevents her from guessing the rest. In the House of Ida, Antonio has said, there is no furniture or lights or decoration. Only double-thick walls and a front door that sticks. La Genia, Antonio calls her. The genius. Sometimes Maddalena envies her—this woman who never swims below the surface of life, who believes whatever she is told.

  “So I work,” Maddalena continues, “and I calm down a little because it feels good to make some money, and it’s nice to see the city every day and to sit with you on the bus and watch the people go by, and now, all of a sudden, that’s too much for him. When do I have time for another man, Ida? When? It doesn’t make sense!”

  “Please keep your voice down.” She looks around the bus. Gloria raises her eyebrows, makes an exaggerated frown. “I believe you, but, as you know, I don’t count.”

  “It’s strange,” Maddalena says, her face turned toward the window. “I don’t want to quit my job. I’m used to it. Did you ever think I’d say that?”

  At the Golden Hem, Maddalena works as quickly as her hands allow. It is the only way to occupy her mind. The week of competition passes slowly. Mr. Gold walks up and down the aisles, quiet and serious as a judge now that he’s made rivals of his little ladies. He looks twice at the pile on Ida’s table but won’t admit his pleasant surprise. Or maybe it is obvious what they are up to, and he is giving her false hope. Whatever the case, Maddalena does not care. She will play along until he tells her otherwise.

  The race ends on Friday, two weeks before Thanksgiving, when word ripples across the rows of tables that Mr. Gold has fired two Polish women, two new Americans on the other side of the room, and Gloria.

  He stands at Gloria’s table with his head down, shifting his weight from side to side.

  Before she starts to cry, he hands her a tissue from his shirt pocket. “Now I have nothing,” she says. “Now I jump off the Memorial Bridge.”

  “My situation could change after Christmas,” Mr. Gold tells her, with a softness he’s not shown in the months Maddalena has known him. His hand rests on her shoulder. “If you’re still looking for work in January, don’t forget me.”

  Before she leaves, Gloria writes her phone number and address on a slip of paper, hands it to Maddalena, and wishes her and the baby good health. She makes Maddalena promise to visit her. “Come cheer me up,” she says, “before the little one comes. And after, too. You’ll be fat and I’ll be skinny from starving.” To Ida she says nothing.

  “You’ll find a job before December,” Maddalena assures her.

  Each morning now, when the bus reaches Gloria’s stop, Maddalena crosses herself and says a prayer. She still expects Gloria to walk down the aisle balancing one of those giant packages on her hip. People disappear so quickly, she thinks, as the strangers take their seats, the doors snap closed, and the bus charges ahead in a cloud of smoke. She is never prepared for it, though it has happened to her again and again, in two countries, with and without warning. And she never remembers, from one person to the next, how much easier life would be if she didn’t care.

  4

  Giulio Called Julian

  “GIULIO!” CALLS SIGNORA STELLA, from his front porch. She carries a pan of lasagna, enough to last him a week. It is just past ten in the morning, and she has woken him from a particularly mysterious dream.

  “Giulio Fabbri!” she calls again. She bangs her fist on the door, tries the broken bell, then shakes her head and leaves the pan on the top step. He watches her shuffle down Seventh Street in her winter coat and slippers. Not until she crosses Lincoln will he dare retrieve
her gift.

  For nine full months he has been an orphan, and still the old ladies bring him food. Now he will have to pay Signora Stella a long, somber visit to return her pan. She will sit him at her kitchen table and brag about her daughter’s house in New Castle and the successful restaurant her son Gino has opened in her honor. “Forty is still young,” she’ll tell him, and point her finger at his face. “Don’t let anybody tell you your life is over.”

  To avoid all this, a few days later he writes Mille Grazie on a slip of paper, signs it, and tapes it to the empty pan. When the neighborhood goes dark, he sets out for the Stella house, leaves the pan at the front door, and sneaks back home. He wonders if Signora Stella will even notice the new name, Julian, that he has used on the note. All year he has practiced the bow-tie loops of the American J, first on thank-you cards for the guests who’d attended his father’s funeral, then on the checks he mailed to the power company and the government. He wants everyone to see hope—rebirth is the word—in the flourish of the American letter, in the embrace of the new country. Not betrayal. Not a rejection of his parents or the good Fabbri line. He has been a good son. He cannot be accused of disrespect.

  No, Julian did not bang his fists on his father’s casket, after the lid was closed and he’d seen his face for the last time. He believes that grief, like love, should be a private thing. Calmly he shook the hands of his family friends, endured the women’s cold, wet cheeks pressed to his face, and invited them all back to the house for lunch, the whole time keeping in mind the words of his favorite American thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” Impassively Julian listened to Gino Stella’s long, jumbled, half-remembered story of his father’s winning fifty dollars on a horse called Fly Me Home. “Any name that reminded him of an airplane, your father would bet on it,” said Gino, to a chorus of agreement among the other men in the room. “Don’t ask me how much he lost on that stinker Sky’s the Limit. I tell you, the only tragedy in the life of Ernesto Fabbri was that he never saw an airplane from the inside. He had a good wife, a son with intelligence, a decent job, plenty of money—but he’d have given them all up to fly cross-country in a Connie.” Julian nodded and scratched his beard. He put his arms around Gino and thanked him for his words. Not until the last guest departed did he stand at the open refrigerator, rest his head on the cool vinyl door, and weep.