Sofia's Tune (16 page)

“Just Sydney is fine. Go ahead and eat.”

Antonio dug in.

“Ohio, you say?”

Antonio nodded.

“Indeed, I’ve recently come from that state. The people there were…shall we say, most hospitable. Oberlin is a fine choice, if you like the Midwest. Nothing like New York, though, where you can meet people late at night at a cafe and have a conversation. Very Twain-like, that Ohio, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I only know about the college.” Antonio felt so at ease with the man that before he knew it, he’d told him the story about his father. Tiredness, or perhaps anxiety, had been loosening his tongue lately.

“Nasty business what goes on in this city sometimes. My condolences and sympathies.” He waved the barman away when he tried to bring him a scotch. Cupping his coffee between his hands, Sydney leaned over the bar.

“Let me tell you something, Antonio.” He cleared his throat and straightened his neck the way an actor would before beginning his lines.

And then he talked till the sun went down

And the chickens went to roost;

And he seized the collar of the poor young man,

And never his hold he loosed.

Antonio wasn’t sure if he might have just bared his soul to a drunken man.

“From a poem I wrote a few years back. You will have to tell me, young man, if I talk until the chickens roost. Sometimes I am unaware of the possibility that I might be becoming a bore.”

“Not at all. Please, continue.”

“Thank you.” He twisted his hand in the air as though he were about to take a bow.

Antonio swallowed the last bit of egg and toast and tipped his head forward to hear over the banter of a group of men who had just entered.

“A writer, you see, has to be an excellent observer of human activity. He has his ear to the wind during every party and in every conversation on the train and in the street. This is not rude eavesdropping, you understand. It’s much more important than that. If he does not do it, how else will he create characters that charm and intrigue and stimulate the modern reader?”

“I suppose you are correct.” Antonio slipped the uneaten shelled egg into his pocket. He would need to make his apologies and get back to Luigi soon.

“I’m glad you agree. Then you will not think less of me when I tell you that due to my keen observation I may know just the man who could help you.”

Antonio set his water glass back down on the rough oak surface of the bar. Here he was as removed from The Bend as one could be, and he meets someone who knows something. “What did you hear, Mr. Porter? Something about my father?”

The man chuckled. “Call me Sydney, son, or I might be tempted not to tell.”

“Sydney.” One of these monikers—Henry, Porter—was probably correct. The man obviously used a pen name. Like Annie Adams’s father. Like Dolly at The Fourteenth. He tipped his chin to show he was listening.

“Now, Antonio, I am not in the habit of…well, ever since I returned from Ohio…uh, from Honduras for that matter, I do not put myself in situations where anyone will think I’m doing anything unscrupulous.”

Antonio stiffened. What did he know? “Please, if you have knowledge about how or why my father was shot, tell it.”

“I wish I could, but I know nothing about that.”

“I thought you said—”

“I said I knew someone who could help you. Help you get into Oberlin, or concert halls. Shucks, as Twain would say, maybe both.”

“Oh.” Antonio swallowed hard, embarrassed that he’d guessed incorrectly. Of course the man, an artist of words, would be more interested in Antonio’s musical aspirations than his personal troubles. “Who might that be, sir?”

“A benefactor.” He pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil out of his pocket and grinned. “A writer must always be prepared. In fact, I’ve written several stories right over there in that booth.”

Luigi barked. Through the window in the dim lamplight Antonio could see some street urchins teasing his dog with a stick, boys who should be in bed at this hour.

The author scribbled something on the paper. “I live in a section sometimes dubiously referred to as Genius Row. It’s really mere red brick row houses on Washington Square South between Thompson Street and the 5th Avenue el, a place where musicians, artists, and writers dwell. One man in particular is in residence there for only a short time. This man, Paderewski, is a concert musician. You’ve heard of him?”

Antonio had. He was quite famous. “He is Polish. Just performed the American debut of his opera last year. I wish I had the funds to attend his concerts. Solo recitals. No one else sells tickets to a solo performance, but he does it to great success.”

“He gives very few, as I understand. I have had the pleasure of meeting him through an acquaintance. Here is his New York address. As I said, he is in the city at the moment. You should go see him because an opportunity like this may come only once in a lifetime.”

Antonio glanced out the window again. Luigi was holding his own. “I don’t think the man would see me.” Certainly not without someone to make introductions. “And I don’t see why he should.”

“I happen to know, my keen observations you understand, that he endorses aspiring young musicians. He supports them with cash. A charitable sort, like that library you were telling me of.” He held out the paper.

Antonio stammered. “Uh, why, if I may ask, would you, a stranger an hour ago, want to help me?”

“Because someone assisted me once. Take it from a middle-aged man with more life experience than you, son. If you don’t grasp the brass ring when it comes around, it could be forever out of reach and you’ll be left with regrets. No one wants that.” He lit a cigar. “And besides, strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Antonio thanked him, took the paper, and hurried outside.

Chapter 17

Sofia could not control her yawns as she worked in the dim corner that had been assigned to her. It was not that she hadn’t been tired on other days, but the darkness and lack of conversation with co-workers made the work especially wearisome. She glanced over her shoulder. Mr. Richmond was watching her much too closely. If she hadn’t won the design contest that the management had promoted for seamstresses, he would have fired her already. She needed a plan, a way to make herself so valuable to the company he would never be allowed to dismiss her. But today was not a day for plans. Mamma and Serena, her long lost twin, consumed her thoughts, making concentrating on her work extremely challenging.

She focused on the leather sole in her machine. Work was essential. She had to keep her head about her. When the whistle blew Sofia rose from her chair and stretched her back. A boy collected her work while Mr. Richmond looked on. She smiled at him even though he glowered at her.

When she got to the cloakroom, she found Maria. “Last night I brought books I borrowed from Hawkins House to English school and my teacher said we could bring in any American or British reading material we would like to practice with, so long as it did not come from the Free Library on Mulberry.”

Maria whispered. “What’s wrong with that place? My younger sisters go to a sewing club there. They are teaching them so they can get jobs better than working here.”

“The teacher believes the evangelicals over there are trying to convert us. In any case, I’ve been practicing my English with books I got from Hawkins House. You should come by, bring Luisa Russo.”

Maria’s dark eyes widened. “I should bring her. She spends too much time over there, listening to conversations.”

“Oh, she is not happy at home.”

“I suppose that is it.”

They walked outside and toward the trolley. “Mr. Richmond is worried about a worker’s strike even though there has not been one yet in this company,” Maria said.

“Strike? You mean walk away from our jobs?”

“
Sì
.”

“I could never do that.” As much as she didn’t like the man, she would have to assure him she was faithful.

Sofia hurried toward Mulberry Street. She wanted to catch
Signora
Russo before her husband came home, maybe even talk to Luisa. Between them, they had to figure out how to convince Papà to get Mamma the help modern American medicine could offer.

She shooed the tabby cat away from the interior stairs leading to the Falcone rooms. “I have not been away that long,” she said to the cat in English, out of the strange notion that cats living in America listened to you better in the native tongue. Joey did it, too. Edging the cat to the side with the tip of her boot she mused about how cats, whether they knew what you wanted or not, made up their own minds about when to move. When she got to the door, a thumping sound came through the walls like someone knocking a chair against the baseboards. “
Signora
Russo?” Sofia put her hand on the doorknob just as it turned from the other side. She let go as Carla Russo opened it.

“Oh, Sofia, your Mamma…I just don’t know—”

Sofia pushed the door wide. Mamma sat on the edge of a chair, thumping her head against the wall.

“Stop it, Mamma!” Sofia tried to urge her away but the woman kept doing it, each time with more force. A trickle of blood appeared at her temple.

Carla ran for a pillow and placed it between Mamma’s head and the wall and after two more thumps Mamma stopped and hung her head toward her lap.

Sofia could not get her mother to meet her gaze. She looked up at the healer.

“She is despondent, Sofia. My herbs and tinctures cannot help with this.”

A sour burn rose in Sofia’s throat. “We will take her to the hospital. Papà will just have to accept it. I will work extra shifts.”

Sofia and Carla worked together to bathe and dress Sofia’s mother. They left her head uncovered because she complained of a headache and wailed whenever they brought a scarf near. “I have money for a cab,” Sofia offered.

Carla sucked in a deep breath. “Good, because I cannot go with you.”

“Oh, please. I need help.”

Carla’s deep shadowed eyes spoke of more worry. Her husband, most likely.

“All right. Go home. But please stop and tell Gabriella where I’ve gone. She and the children can wait here for Papà.”

Carla helped her find a cab and guided them inside. “Go with God,” Carla said, shutting the door of the carriage.

“Bellevue,” Sofia told the driver. No matter what it cost, Mamma would have the best care.

But once there, to her surprise, they were directed to a waiting room filled with people who coughed, gagged, cried, and even bled in plain sight.

“There are not enough nurses for all these immigrants,” a woman in a pressed white uniform told her when she complained.

“But my mother is not ill, not like that. She does not have…” Oh, how she despised it when her English failed her.

The woman looked at her over her wire spectacles. “Are you saying your mother suffers from, shall we say, an unstable mind?”

Sofia nodded.

“You do not belong here, my dear. I’ll have an orderly give you directions.”

She returned to the hard wooden chair next to Mamma. A serene looked passed over her mother’s face as she watched some children playing with a top at their mother’s feet. At least there had been no more wails or complaints about her head. Sofia’s presence did not seem to bother her mother anymore. Papà had been wrong about that. He’d been wrong about a lot of things.

They waited quite a long time as people moved in and out of the room. Mamma seemed entranced by them and hardly acknowledged Sofia. Perhaps this was the only treatment she needed, to go out among other people, folks who had not come from Benevento.

Sofia tried to relax. The sun was getting low, casting waving fingers of light across the floor. Papà would be coming home soon and hearing from Gabriella that Sofia had defied him. Sitting there with nothing to do allowed Sofia’s mind to wander. She thought about Pope Leo who had died last month. An account of his last days had been printed in the
New York Times
and Claudia had read it to her on lunch break. The article mentioned how his mind betrayed him in his last days. He’d seen someone in his room who wasn’t there. He’d acted afraid. These were signs that he was on his deathbed. Mamma had seen things that weren’t there. She’d been afraid.
Please, God. Do not take her. I need her.

Maybe Papà wouldn’t come, but if he did he might not know where the orderly had taken them. She returned to the nurse at the desk. “
Mi scusi
.”

The nurse frowned. Sofia had fallen into Italian by mistake. “I…uh, where will the orderly be taking us?”

The woman had a puzzled look.

“My mother.” Sofia moved to the side so the woman could see Mamma waiting in a chair along the opposite wall.

“Oh, certainly.” She rose and disappeared behind a door. When she returned a man, also dressed in white, followed her.

“Come along,” he said. “We will begin the assessment for Ward’s Island.”

“Where?” Perhaps she had misunderstood.

“Ward's Island. You said your mother is mentally unstable, yes?”

“Uh, no.” Sofia grabbed her mother’s arm and urged her down the hall to the foyer where they descended the steps and left the building. They would have to walk home. Papà would shout the roof off their building, but Sofia could not worry about that right now. After what Claudia had said, and the way the nurse looked at her, she knew she could not take Mamma to such a place. But when they were away from the distraction of the children Mamma had been watching, she began to fade like dying embers. As Mamma’s mood became more agitated, Sofia noted a change in herself. The lonely feeling of isolation crept up her arms to her neck. If only she had her twin with her. Someone. Gabriella was entirely self-absorbed, and her brothers were working so much they hardly even noticed their mother’s decline.

“No!” Mamma wrenched away from her and ran down an alley.

As Sofia rushed after her, she realized that while her shoes gave her greater visibility and protection from muddy, muck-filled streets, they were no help when it came to hurrying after a disturbed woman bent on escaping her. “Wait! Help!” She shouted, quite naturally in Italian. But she was nowhere near Mulberry Street and no one bothered to help her.

It was getting dark and Mamma was leading her through a labyrinth of alleys. Shadows faded into garbage cans, boxes, and alley cats so that she couldn’t tell what was what. She held to the corner of a brick wall.
Where was she?
She called out again.

Voices came from the windows and fire escapes. Nothing she could decipher. Someone grabbed her arm. Surprised, she cried out. A beggar held out his palm. She pushed past him, dark thoughts swirling with the fading light. She should never have left the hospital. The danger to Mamma on the streets was probably worse than what the doctors had planned. She shouldn’t have let Claudia spook her with stories.

“Mamma? Please, where are you? Mamma!”

As she rounded the corner and crept into the depths of an alley behind a stable, she heard a scuffling and people yelling in English.

“Get out of here! ’Tis a mad woman if I ever saw one.”

Mamma!

But it wasn’t her. A woman in a long black cloak was handing something toward the people who cowered back as though she offered the plague on a platter.

“God’s Word. It’s free. Take it.”

Sofia approached her and accepted the book she held out, hoping that in return she would help look for Mamma. “My mother, have you seen her? She is not well. She ran…” Sofia caught the woman’s eye, hoping her pleading look would say what she was having trouble expressing.

“Oh, my dear. What is the trouble?” The older woman wrapped an arm around her, shielding them both as they turned away from the others. “Whatever it is, you will find the answers right here.” She pointed to the small black volume.

“No!” Sofia smacked it against her palm in frustration. “Did you see my mamma?”

“No, dear. Is she lost?”

Sofia’s chin trembled. The two of them hurried out of the alley toward the street. They approached a carriage. A policeman stepped out to meet them. Tall, imposing, but with a kind expression. The woman gestured toward him. “Sergeant McNulty, this woman is in distress.”

Sofia glanced around, doubting the New York police would care to search for a lost immigrant woman.

“Tell him what your mother looks like, dear.”

Sofia struggled to find words.

The kind lady inclined her head toward the tall man. “Go on. You can trust this man. He attends my church.”

“My…mamma,” she spurted out.

“Has your mother gotten lost out here?” Sergeant McNulty asked.

“She has. She is…ill. Please help me.”

He held some kind of lantern and began peering down the dark alley, shouting the name Sofia had given him.

“That will scare her away!”

He turned toward her and nodded, lowering the volume of his voice.

Sofia ran down the street, searching in window wells and behind iron fences. “Don’t be afraid, Mamma!” she shouted in Italian.

“Over here.” A boy selling newspapers waved wildly with his free arm.

She rushed over to him and found Mamma huddled on the sidewalk weeping. Sofia spread her arms over her mother’s head like an umbrella. “Thank you,” she said to the boy. She got Mamma to her feet when the policeman approached.

“I will transport you home. The police wagon is right over here.”

“Sofia,” Mamma whispered as they sat in the darkness, the horses trotting along at a good clip.

“
Sì
, Mamma. I am here.”

A low groan emanated from deep in Mamma’s throat. “I cannot bear it.”

“Mamma, you can. Remember what you taught me when I was a little girl. It can’t be darker than midnight. You remember that old Italian proverb? You told me that so I’d know things would get better, not worse.”

“Sofia?”

“
Sì
, Mamma?”

Sofia’s mother gazed out at the street lamps. “It is always midnight.”

***

Papà was in a rage when they arrived. The policeman stayed by the door, probably wondering if he needed to intervene.

“Sofia, she could have been harmed. Killed! Isn’t that right, Mr. Policeman?”

The large uniformed man took one step forward before Papà stopped him in his tracks with his ranting. Mamma rubbed her hands over her face and then retreated into the bedroom. Gabriella sat on the sofa, eyes wide.

“This is no place for her. She has to be safe,” Papà insisted, stomping his foot.

“
Signor
Falcone,” Sergeant McNulty shouted above Papà’s rising temper. “There is no harm done. I have seen both your daughter and your wife home. Please try to remain calm.”