The Saint of Lost Things Read online

  His parents lived long and died painless deaths in their sleep within a year of each other. Julian took some comfort in that. But he vowed not to wear black—inside or out—for the rest of his life, like the widows in his neighborhood. He was grateful for the end of summer, when they stopped bringing so much food, and he believed he’d finally exhausted their pity. But apparently he still deserved it.

  The first months of solitude in his house on Seventh Street, Julian donated his grandparents’ little porcelain sculptures to the church and stocked the bookshelves with history texts and albums and collections of American literature. He moved his accordion and guitar and boxes of sheet music from the basement to what had been his father’s bedroom. He took down the ghostly photos of his mother from the living room wall and hung in their place a poster of the Manhattan skyline. In a gold frame on the end table he displayed a single family photograph: father, mother, and son at Re-hoboth Beach, the man’s arm around the waist of his pretty young wife, the baby named Giulio behind them digging in the sand. All of them were gone now.

  “I won’t rest until you’re settled,” his father had once warned him. They’d been sitting at the kitchen table, just a few weeks before his mother’s stroke. “Not for one minute. Not on this earth and not after I’m dead. And your mother won’t, either. If you remember us, think of that.”

  “Think of you very tired, you mean?” Giulio replied. “Walking around heaven with bags under your eyes?” He knuckled his father’s bald head.

  “You’re like a big kid,” said his father. He slapped his hand away. “No job, no wife, nothing to do all day. What’ll happen to you when I’m gone?”

  Every Sunday, Julian visits their graves, side by side in Cathedral Cemetery. He fills the vases with fresh flowers from DiNardo’s on West Eighth Street, the one Italian-owned florist in Wilmington. Afterward, he walks the ten blocks to Renato’s for an espresso, a slice of pizza, and the newspaper, which he reads in the corner booth. Then he sits on his porch. Neighbors walk by and stop to talk. Sometimes he plays his accordion and sings a little, under his breath, unsure of his voice but overcome with the beauty of “Vivere” or “O Sole Mio.” For dinner he chooses from one of the pans he keeps in the icebox. On the days between deliveries, he cooks pasta and a half-price cut of meat from Angelo’s Market. He can live this way for twenty more years on the money his parents saved for him, longer if he switches to silk flowers, even longer if he sells the house and moves to an apartment. But this is how Giulio would have lived. Julian has promised himself to take a different path. Each night, standing at his bedroom window in his underwear unable to sleep, watching the men walk home from shift work in the city and the lights go out in the streetlamps on Union, he promises to start making good on his new name.

  But then he sleeps until eleven, his mind heavy with dreams. He wakes exhausted, and by the time he’s out of bed, shaved, dressed, and has finished his lunch, it’s midafternoon—too late in the day to make even the smallest decision. There is the newspaper to read, the library books to return, the porch to sweep, dinner to worry over. No plan begun at three o’clock can ever succeed; it must be set in motion before noon to have a chance. The months have gone swiftly by, and now it is not only late in the day, but late in the year—November—and Julian feels 1953 slipping away. Better to put off the next stage of rebirth until January, he thinks. A new year for the new man called Julian Fabbri. Better to fill his lungs with the fresh air of 1954 than to contaminate them with the staleness and grief of ‘53.

  So he walks up and down the neighborhood, wanders the aisles of the library, or brings his folding chair to sit with the men at the corner of Seventh and Union. With them he argues over the so-called end of the Korean War, which Julian worries is not an end at all. He has read too much history not to see the decades of unrest to follow. The old men, in their camel coats and striped ties, smelling of cigars and woodsy cologne, disagree. Julian can barely stomach their dangerous optimism, their belief that, slowly but surely, the world is losing its taste for war. Now that their own government has electrocuted the little Jewish couple on no evidence at all, and Russia has exploded the H-bomb, and even Marilyn Monroe has disgraced herself, how can these old men think the world is headed anywhere but disaster? He counts off these examples and more for them, one for each finger on both hands, but they stare back at him blankly. One of them always changes the subject. Leaves blow around in little tornadoes at their feet, and the debate becomes whether or not this November feels warmer than last year’s, whether or not the winter will be snowy. Julian gives up on them.

  Instead he watches the people getting off the bus and imagines what compels them to walk so briskly. Who waits at home for the woman in the purple hat? Does the teenaged boy, carrying a bucket and a washcloth, need to earn money after school now that his aging father—in bed with a broken back—can no longer support his family? And what of the man Julian has named Dr. Z, who waits for an hour every day on the opposite corner, checking his pocket watch and digging into his black bag? What does he keep in there? What is he plotting? Julian can entertain himself for hours with these inventions.

  On a Sunday morning in mid-November, he wakes earlier than usual and walks to the park to feed the pigeons. It is a chilly, gray day after a week of sun, and Julian fears this may be the last of his walks until spring. His body has always rebelled against cold weather. Itchy red spots form at his fingertips, toes, and neck, no matter how well he covers himself. For the first time this season, he wears the blue scarf his mother knitted for him. It smells like her—her hairspray, at least—and he stops for a moment on the sidewalk to breathe her in. In the last years of her life, her hair had begun to thin. She used to sculpt the remaining wisps into a hollow bun, then coat the bun with the spray until it hardened. She’d emerge from the bathroom in a mist, and soon she herself took on that chemical smell of wood smoke and wildflowers.

  The park is small, less than half the size of a city block. It is all grass and trees except for the wide circle of cobblestones in the center, which will be a fountain if the church raises enough money. Presumably St. Anthony’s spent the bulk of its donated funds—a percentage of which had come grudgingly from Julian’s parents—on the elaborate wrought-iron fence that encloses the park. Atop each slat of the fence sits a sharp spike to keep out visitors after dark. What damage they could do to a bunch of trees, Julian can only wonder—carve their initials into the bark? Make love on the already dying grass? If anything, the church should encourage parishioners to spend time here. Most days Julian sits alone on one of the six wooden benches bolted along the walking path.

  Immediately the pigeons descend on him from all sides and fight for space on the cobblestone dinner plate. He clucks his tongue, lets them eat from his palm. They amuse him, these silly creatures cooing and crashing into one another, and he can use a laugh on this bleak Sunday, with the wind swirling the dead leaves and rattling the windows of the rectory. He has been awake for only two hours, but already his limbs ache with fatigue.

  The Negro man, Abraham Waters, walks on the sidewalk along the fence and stops at the corner of Tenth and Lincoln. He wears a long coat and dress pants that drag along the ground. No hat, though he’s bald everywhere but around his ears. He doesn’t cross the street. He sways, rubs his face, and looks up and down the block. Drunk, thinks Julian.

  When he pushes through the heavy gate into the park, Julian’s back stiffens. He considers leaving, but he’s barely halfway through his bag of birdseed, and he doesn’t want the man to think he drove him from the grounds of his own parish.

  Waters sits on the opposite bench, rests his elbows on his knees, and covers his face with his hands. He stays this way for a long time. He does not seem to have brought anything for the birds. He snorts, coughs, and cups his freezing ears, all the while slumped so far forward that his back is parallel to the ground.

  Unlike every other Italian in this neighborhood, Julian does not hate Mr. Waters. He does
not fear him or his family of six, who have moved into the house across the street. What’s to fear from a man who keeps his yard free of trash and his gutters clean? Yes, he’d rather Waters lived on the East Side, or in that new colored development behind the bridge, but only because life might be easier there among his own people, away from the ignorant cafoni who think his black skin might rub off on them. On the East Side, Waters wouldn’t be forced to keep his wife and kids dead-bolted in the house with the shades drawn. As it is, they go in and out so quietly that Julian sometimes forgets that anyone at all lives at 1932.

  The day the Waters family appeared, late in January of that year, Julian’s neighbors stood on their porches with their arms folded and shouted at them as they unloaded their boxes. Angelo Montale spit on their lawn. A group met that very night in the back room of Angelo’s Market to devise a plan to force them out. Rosa Volpe, mother of Renato, who lived next door at 1930, refused to leave the safety of her house for a month. Angelo convinced even Julian’s father, who had had no opinion about anything other than horse racing, the saltiness of his soup, and his son’s unhealthy attachment to books and solitude, that Waters must be run out of this neighborhood that he and his fellow Italians had built. He’d returned from Angelo’s in a breathless rant about self-defense, land rights, and the immediate need for a gun. A week later, he died.

  The morning of the funeral, Waters left a small bouquet of flowers at Julian’s doorstep. On the card was signed: “Many Condolences, Your Neighbor, Abraham Waters & Family.” Since then, Julian has waved good morning to him from his porch on no fewer than five occasions. Once, he walked across Seventh and delivered a letter sent to him by mistake. It turned out to be a short visit. One of the boys pulled open the door halfway and peered around it; he snatched the letter from Julian’s fingers and slammed the door without a thank-you.

  When a pigeon grazes Waters’s shoulder, he finally lifts his head. His face is leathery, pocked with tiny dark freckles that might be moles if Julian could see them up close. He wipes his eyes.

  “Cold day,” Julian says. “Summer to fall to winter in one shot, looks like.” It is the most he has ever said to the man.

  Waters doesn’t answer. He sits back, folds his hands in his lap, and stares at the sky. His fingers and legs are trembling.

  “You feeling all right?” Julian asks.

  Waters shakes his head, his eyes still fixed on the clouds. “Nothing of your concern.”

  Julian shakes out the nearly empty bag of seeds closer to Waters’s feet than he intends. Suddenly the pigeons rush across the pavement and dive at him from the lower branches of the trees. “Sorry about that,” Julian says.

  He scowls. “I hate birds,” he says and slides to the opposite side of the bench. “Filthy pests.” He holds up one of his trembling hands. “No offense to you.”

  “Do I look like a bird?” Julian says, and smiles. “I like to feed them, that’s all. Good way to pass the time.”

  “Pass the time,” Waters repeats. His face goes blank. The pigeons finish their course and scatter. Only a determined few remain to hunt and peck. Julian is about to rise—nearly ten minutes, an appropriate amount of time, have elapsed—when Waters asks: “What kind of work you in, anyway? You’re always home.”

  “Me?” says Julian. He has not been asked this in years. Everyone he talks to has known him since he was a boy. “I’m looking for work right now, as a matter of fact. Something with numbers. I’ve always been good in that department.” He has no idea why he tells this particular lie. Numbers confuse and frustrate him. When he does start looking for a job—the second day of January—he will not consider any position that requires knowledge of math. Nor will he be any use at a job that requires “good hands”: stonemason (like his father), barber, electrician. He will inquire as to the qualifications of a librarian, a newspaper reporter, a teacher of history or literature. He has four years of high school to his credit and twenty-five years with his nose in books. If they are not worth something, he is out of luck.

  “I drive a cab,” Waters says, though of course Julian knows this. Between fares, he parks in his driveway and waits. Once, he spent an entire afternoon in the front seat with the engine running, listening to the radio. “You gotta be good at arithmetic to make a good cabbie.”

  You must also know how to drive, Julian thinks. He won’t confess that he’s never learned. His other plan for the new year—the third of January—is to get his license and purchase his first automobile. He dreams of making it all the way to Florida, where he’ll spend a month going from beach to beach, sleeping on the sand, drinking rum punch in a big wicker chair. “That a good business?” he asks.

  He shrugs. “Some days yes, some no. But I’m grateful for the work.”

  “Times are tough,” Julian says, brightly.

  Again the blank stare.

  Julian averts his eyes. On the other side of the park, two boys in hooded jackets jump from a tree stump into a pile of leaves. They roll around, yapping and laughing, until the leaves are flattened. They lie on their backs on the grass and kick their legs. Julian can see their breath from here.

  Waters maintains his fixed stare. A trickle of sweat rolls down Julian’s neck under his scarf, but he won’t let the man think he’s afraid. He watches the boys gather the leaves and rebuild the pile.

  “My oldest ran off,” Waters finally says. “How do you like that? Sixteen years old. Gone two weeks without a word. Don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” He shakes his head. “Shit—” He reaches down, pries a rock from the crumbling pavement, and throws it into the trees. The birds scatter. He bites the corner of his lip, and for the first time Julian notices his missing front tooth, his bright pink gums.

  “Ran off?” Julian asks. “Out of nowhere?”

  Waters shrugs. “Kidnapped, run off, no idea.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” Julian says. What else can he say? “And the police?”

  “‘If the boy’s dead, sooner or later he’ll get found,’ they tell me. ‘If he’s alive, he don’t want to be found.’ You think they care one way or the other? Sixteen years old. Made good grades. Never hurt a soul. I drive all over Wilmington looking for him, on my own dime. I can’t sleep, can’t eat.” He takes a breath. “His mother’s flat out in bed, can’t move her arms or legs. Some kind of fit.”

  “I wish I’d seen him,” Julian says, lowering his head. But would he recognize him if he did? Was it his hand that reached out and grabbed the letter? He doesn’t even know the boy’s name. Young Negro men all look alike to him—thin as flagpoles, shiny skin, wide noses, hair thick as a helmet. He’s never seen one up close long enough to register a difference. Lately, walking through downtown, he notices more of them, walking fast by themselves or huddled on the street corners, not bothering anybody but not doing much good either.

  Though Julian had his own doubts about integration, especially when it came to schools, he was a passionate advocate for rights and compassion within the walls of 1935 West Seventh Street. America had given every other immigrant a fair shake, he used to argue; why not do the same for people they’d treated with such blatant cruelty? To his father, though—to most men Julian knew—blacks did not fall into the same category as Irish or Greeks, and they only half believed that any undue cruelty had taken place. God had given that race a distinctive color to mark them as different, to signal that they were put on the earth for other reasons. No, not like animals, Ernesto Fabbri would say to his son—though those people did, in fact, need to be tamed; and you didn’t tame people by handing them jobs other people had worked hard to earn.

  “My son,” Waters says, looking up at the trees. He makes two fists and presses them against his waist. “My little Abraham.”

  Why are you sitting here? Julian thinks. If you’re so worried, why aren’t you out looking for him? It feeds Julian’s fears—which he never admitted to his father—that maybe the blacks are, at their core, lazier than the other races. Right
now, little Abraham could be lying in a ditch under the Delaware Memorial Bridge, hit by a car and left bleeding, robbed, desperate for someone to rescue him, and here was his father uselessly broadcasting his grief to a stranger. These are tough times. Julian was right to remind Waters of that. You can’t rest for one single second. The country survived a depression and a war, but in Julian’s mind America is still hungry, still at arms. Everyone is fighting their private battles for the same thing: a little square of land, a steady job, a child to pass his name to; but if they win, something invariably goes wrong. The land is in the wrong place; the job doesn’t pay enough; the child disappears.

  How many times in the past two years of mourning has someone told Julian, “This too shall pass”? The consolation works every time: he imagines himself in the middle of a dark, dripping tunnel, stepping slowly toward the distant light. He believes in the light, that time will heal. But then he sees the happy fathers playing bocce in the street, the kids in the pile of leaves, the mothers at the grocery flirting with Angelo, and he fights the urge to shake them. “There’s another side of the story!” he could yell. He could say, “This peace in your heart right now, this uncomplicated joy, this too shall pass.” His parents had once been young and untouched by sadness, but then Caterina, their first child, died in her crib a year after she was born. They had thought themselves safe, just as Giulio had never truly believed his mother and father would leave him, just as most people believe they have been spared until the hammer comes down. Even after he changes his life—January, January—any happiness Julian achieves will be short-lived. The only difference will be that he’ll know to appreciate it.