The Saint of Lost Things (36 page)

He marched through the tall grass of the empty lot that bordered the back of the restaurant. It was a mess back here: scrap metal, trash, discarded magazines, cigarette butts. A place for the kitchen workers to throw dice or fight or catch some air. Antonio gripped the crowbar through his right pocket and limped his way to the front of the trattoria.

He had stopped in for a visit a few times during the renovation, just to pay his respects to Renato, but this was the first chance he had to see the finished space up close. The tables, draped in crisp white cloth, were arranged in neat rows of two- and four-tops and set with gold-colored plates. The liquor bottles sat on illuminated shelves behind the bar. The floors had been buffed and polished. The bulbs of the elaborate chandelier above the maître d’ station bloomed from multicolored glass petals. Circular booths, upholstered in black
leather, lined the left wall. It made Mrs. Stella’s—its muraled walls plagued with cracks, its oil paintings hung crookedly—seem all the more dismal. Any customer walking in here would feel inspired to open their wallets, if just to live up to the decor.

According to Renato, every table had been booked for the first four nights. He had reserved a booth for Antonio, Maddalena, and his parents. Ida refused to come without Mario, who referred to the trattoria with the same words Renato used for Mrs. Stella’s: “the enemy.” Papà believed in staying on good terms with everyone, especially your competition, because you never knew whose help you might need in the future. “Wilmington is big enough for two pasta-and-gravy places,” he told Mario, but there was no convincing him. He protected Mrs. Stella’s with as much force as he protected Nunzia and Nina. Any threat to it was a threat to the future of those two little girls.

Papà would not approve of what Antonio was about to do. He would remind him that Renato had been his best friend for nearly half his life, that if Italians didn’t protect each other, they had no chance in this country. He would tell Antonio to think of how well Renato had treated Maddalena the day he’d brought her into the pizzeria. Had not Renato remembered Maddalena’s birthdays more reliably than Antonio himself, and made sure to steal him fresh flowers to take home to her?

Antonio hesitated. He ducked around the corner of the restaurant, suddenly convinced he’d misjudged his good friend, that he was no better than a jealous and ungrateful child. Then he remembered Renato’s relentless teasing after that first visit with Maddalena, and the knowing looks he’d exchanged with Buzzy whenever they brought up the subject of her beauty. As the years of their friendship unfolded before him, it became clear that Renato had never failed to undo his few acts of kindness. “Go talk to that blonde in the corner,” he’d said one night on Market Street, long
before Maddalena arrived. “I hear she won’t put up a fight.” And then just as Antonio had convinced her to take a walk with him, there came Renato dragging him off to some emergency that turned out to be a card game with Buzzy. Countless times Renato had pulled these stupid tricks, and Antonio had put up with them.

It had occurred to Antonio over the past few months that his own nights with Cassie must have played a part in Renato’s sudden show of love and devotion. Cassie was the only girl the two of them had shared; though they never spoke of it, they knew they had come within months of each other, first Renato, then Antonio. Now Renato had reclaimed her for good, a victory of sorts over the man she’d turned to when she’d grown tired of him the first time.

All this was in Antonio’s head as he huddled on the side of the trattoria the night Renato and Cassie unveiled their tacky sign. This and the fear that God, after all the songs and blessings and kissing of crucifixes, had grown as cruel as the lowest of the men He’d created. The murderers and kidnappers, the swindlers and thieves. There was no hope, not in heaven or on earth, if not even God could show mercy. Antonio wiped his face with his sleeve. The stale smell of the hospital clung to him.

Like Maddalena, he believed in destiny. Some force stronger than himself had led him here, just as it had led her to America and the two of them to each other. This same force—unmanageable, unpredictable—dictated even his unimportant everyday decisions: the blue shirt over the white, the king of diamonds over the four of spades. If he did not call on destiny, he had no nobler way to explain that he did not feel in control of his body when he stepped from the shadows on the side of Trattoria Renato, glanced once at the road to make sure no cars were passing, and smashed the glass of the front window. With the crowbar, he pulled apart the neon sign. The words unraveled in loud pops. A fizz of light, a slow hiss, one letter after another shattering. This time, when Antonio fell to
his knees and wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve, all he could smell was whiskey.

Headlights appeared on New Castle Avenue. Antonio stepped through the window and ducked, praying for the slow-moving car to pass. He kept still, the crowbar quivering in his hand. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since the rain, and he shivered in his wet shirt. Eventually, the headlights faded. He gripped the crowbar with two hands, gave what was left of the sign one last stab, and pulled the blinds.

He jumped through the window and ran to the empty lot. He crouched in the mud among the thick weeds and tried to catch his breath. His armpits were damp, his underwear twisted and bunched. He must have cut his leg on a nail. He waited in those weeds for a half hour at least, shifting his weight, conscious of every flicker of light on the neighborhood side of the lot, the whoosh of every car as it zoomed down New Castle Avenue on the other side. Finally, when his knees could take no more, he returned the crowbar to his pants and walked to his car with his chin up, at the nonchalant pace of the innocent. He even waved hello to a man setting out his empty milk bottles.

His hands shook as he put the keys in the ignition. Even after he drove off, removed his shirt, and wrapped the blanket around his naked chest, he could not stop shivering. He circled the neighborhood and passed the trattoria twice—once coming north, once coming south. Unless you looked closely, and you knew a neon sign had been put up two hours before, it was impossible to see any damage from the road. No police would investigate until morning at the earliest, he told himself. By that time, he would be at work, where it was impossible to concentrate on anything but the secure attachment of armrest to seat.

And yet he finds he cannot go to work. He has not slept at all, not even after the bath he took in the middle of the night, or the
change of clothes, or the cup of warm milk he fixed himself in the kitchen. He has pushed the chair closer to Maddalena’s bed and lays his head on her arm. He closes his eyes. People move in and out of the room. He should call Mr. Hannagan, explain his absence, but he doesn’t. He will keep completely still, his muscles throbbing, his bones fragile as chalk. If he moves, as Brenda tries to get him to do—her hands on his shoulder, her cheek against his ear—he will break into a thousand pieces.

16
Old Women

W
HEN
M
ADDALENA WAKES
, she finds an old woman asleep in the chair beside her. A blanket is pulled up to her neck. She still wears her shoes. Her fingers clasp a rosary. At first, Maddalena does not recognize her. The old woman’s face is turned toward the window, and the light is poor. It must be the middle of the night, but there is no clock on the wall. There are only unfamiliar shadows: squares of lattice, an umbrella shape, an inch-thick line slanted from floor to ceiling. Maddalena tries to lift her shoulders, but they are too heavy. She smells roasted chicken, applesauce, detergent. Beyond the fuzzy glow of the doorway sit a desk and a large metal crate on rollers. A figure passes, then another. They move like women, swaying their hips.
Sashaying.
One of them stops at the desk. She gestures with her hands. Her mouth opens and closes. She pushes the metal crate away, but the wheels make no noise as they glide across the floor. Her footsteps, too, are silent.

Maddalena turns to the old woman. Her vision blurs, but the gray hair under the scarf and the knotted hands stay in focus. “Mamma,” she says. She hears only a dull moan in her head, nothing like the word at all. The moan throbs behind her ears. She tries again to wake her, to the same effect. It has been so long since she
has seen her face. If only she could make a sound loud enough, Mamma would turn to her. If only she could crawl out of this bed, kneel beside her, and lay her head on her lap. But Maddalena is buried in the sand, like a child at the shore, and no one will come to dig her out; the waves, foamy and swirling and cold, inch closer. If she screams, she will drown.

She remembers Mamma’s skin, creamy-white and soft as a girl’s. She used to say she had not laughed enough in her life to deserve wrinkles. She has lost the velvet black of her hair, the smoothness of her fingers.
Tell me where I am,
Maddalena begs, but her mouth no longer moves, and this time not even the moan pulses through her head—just a staticky silence, a low roar, like the beach in winter.

She does not know if she has slept hours, days, or months, but later, when she wakes again, the silence has broken. A phone rings; voices murmur just out of reach; something beside her clicks and hums. The blanket sits folded on the chair, but Mamma is gone. For the first time, Maddalena notices the vases of flowers. Light pools around them on the windowsill, breaks through the parted drapes. There is a girl standing in the doorway. She wears a white cap, white shoes, white nylon stockings, and a white dress. The girl is a nurse. This is a hospital room. She is in a hospital bed.

“Mamma!”

The nurse turns to her. “Mrs. Grasso?” she says, and rushes into the room. “Mrs. Grasso!” She is thin and pretty, her face flat with eyes wide and set far apart. She grips Maddalena’s shoulders and leans down so close to her face that their noses touch. “Can you hear me?” she says.

Maddalena nods.

The nurse presses a button on the wall, then reaches for the blood-pressure device that Maddalena recognizes from her many
visits to Dr. Barone. She wraps it around Maddalena’s arm and pumps the little black balloon. “Good,” she says. “I’m Nurse Morgan. I’ve been taking good care of you.”

“C’è Mamma?
” asks Maddalena.
“L’ho vista.”
She tries to point to the chair, but she cannot move her arm. And yet there are no straps restraining her. “L’ho
vista nella sedia. Dov’è andata?
”

“I don’t understand,” says the nurse. Her pink cheeks go pinker. “I’m so sorry.” She presses the button again. “We’re going to find someone for you to talk to.”

“
Cosa mi è successo?”

She ignores her.

“Il mio bambino. Cos’è accaduto al mio bambino?”

The nurse bites her lip. “Bam-beeno,” she says. “I know that one.” She looks toward the door over one shoulder, then the other, as if about to steal something. “Baby, right?”

“Cos’è accaduto al mio bambino?”
She feels a tingle in the tips of her fingers and toes, then a sharp pain between her legs, behind her knees and elbows. The sand is giving way.

“The doctor should be the one to tell you, but—” The nurse looks again, drops her voice to a whisper. “Oh, what the hell. You have a healthy baby girl, Mrs. Grasso. Looks just like you, too. She’s been waiting for you.” She grabbed her hand. “Now, don’t tell anybody I told you, OK? This place would love to fire me as it is.”

“Una bambina?
” Maddalena says.

“You just hold on,” says the nurse. Her face contorts in great frustration. “Joanne!” she calls, so sharply Maddalena flinches. “Get somebody in here, for God’s sake! She’s waking up!”

“Mi sento male. Che cos’ho?”
Maddalena asks. She searches for and finds the English words, but they don’t come out.
“Dov’è la mia bambina? Con Mamma?
”

“What you should do is try to stay calm,” says Nurse Morgan, and smoothes her hair behind her ear.

More strangers enter the room: a nurse, a young doctor, another nurse, an old doctor. They ask her for her name and address over and over, take her temperature, and rub her arms and legs. They stand on all sides, smiling. Where is my family? she asks, but no one seems to understand. How could they leave me here? All the people can tell her is that her loved ones are on the way.

“This is a day of great joy,” says the young doctor. “Are you a religious woman, Mrs. Grasso?”

“You didn’t see the mother-in-law with the rosary?” Nurse Morgan says to him.

Maddalena has never known exhaustion like this. The talking overwhelms her, and the parade of doctors and nurses, and the swiftly hardening sand. Her hands and feet go numb again. And though she fights to keep her eyes from closing—so she can see Mamma again and her baby girl, just once, before the Lord takes them—she cannot.

III
THE LIGHT AROUND HIM CHANGES