The Saint of Lost Things (22 page)

“Whatever you do to make those people leave, you have to stay invisible,” Antonio said. “If they see your faces, they can always come after you. They have friends, too, you know. That was the problem with Cassie’s plan. Too much exposure.”

Renato stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. Antonio continued to think out loud, trying to restore their faith in him: they could plant stolen jewelry in the taxi; they could follow Waters until he broke the law, as he would eventually, and then report him to the police. He talked on and on. Cassie’s eyes fluttered in half sleep. Mario Lanza sang love songs. Renato lit the grill and threw on some eggs.

“No, forget all that,” Antonio said. “We have to think more simply. Like I told you from the beginning. If you just scare this man enough times, sooner rather than later he won’t want to live there anymore.”

“It has to be sooner,” said Renato. “My uncle—”

“Tonight, then,” said Cassie, suddenly awake. “I still have the energy. Nothing else to do on a Wednesday.”

By this time, Antonio had gone twice to the cabinet to pour himself shots.

“A brick through the window,” said Renato. “It can’t hurt.”

“We can wrap the brick with a note,” said Cassie. “It can say ‘Die, niggers, die.’”

“Gesù Cristo,”
said Antonio. “Where’d you find this girl? You can write that if you want. Not me.
Go home
is good enough. Or maybe you throw some broken glass or dump black paint on the porch, smear dog shit on the windows of the taxi.”

“They’ll laugh at that,” said Cassie. “They’re
used
to that. If we don’t try something bigger, they’ll stay fifty years. In”—she closed her eyes for a moment—“in the year twenty-o-four we’ll be the only white people in Wilmington. Then they’ll be throwing stones at
us.
”

“Not if you keep at it,” said Antonio. “Once a week, every week, at different times of the night. In the morning even, or in the middle of the day if you can. You’ll wear them down. It won’t take long, I bet you, before they give up.”

Buzzy held his stomach. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. “First I’m going to throw up, and then I’m going to crawl into my bed and pass out. All by myself. No rocks and dog shit for me tonight. But good luck.”

“Another chicken,” said Cassie. “Ask me if I’m surprised. Put your coat on, Antonio.” She touched Renato’s sleeve.
“Amore,
finish your eggs. We should go this minute. It’s time we accomplish something.”

“What’s this
we?”
said Antonio, with a smile. “I don’t speak French. There’s just you. No
oui.”

Renato glared at him. “You owe me,” Renato said. “You don’t
come tonight, you erase ten years of friendship. Next time I need a restaurant partner, I won’t turn to you. I’ll tell someone else what I heard the other day from my buddy on Lincoln Street. That space we lost on Riverview. The Greek—” He stopped. He scratched his head in mock contemplation. “Oh, shit. I can’t remember now.”

“Come on,” said Antonio. “What about him?”

Renato shrugged.

If he’d been brave enough to refuse Renato then, six days into January, the day of the Epiphany, maybe Antonio would have avoided all that came afterward. Maybe he would have been at home, where he belonged, when his baby was born. But this sort of courage did not come easily. He had less faith in his own principles than in the insurance of long friendships, of keeping on good terms with men who knew him well enough to hurt him. One day, he told himself, he’d call in favors from all the years he played on other men’s teams—not only Renato’s and Buzzy’s, but his father’s, Mario’s, Mr. Hannagan’s. They would reward him handsomely for his allegiance.

“To keep us warm,” Cassie said, as she downed a shot. “I’m ready.”

So the three of them, in winter coats and scarves and dark hats, walked to Seventh Street. At the railroad tracks, they stopped to fill an old pillowcase with stones and twisted steel nails. Antonio carried the nearly empty bottle of whiskey he’d opened at the pizzeria. With every swig, he reminded himself to keep calm and play along. He was not guilty if he tried to talk them out of it, if he never threw a single stone. “It might be too early,” he said. “This time of night, people are still out.”

“Think about it,” Cassie said. “Anyone walking around this neighborhood probably lives here, which means they’re probably an Italian. They’ll look the other way if they see us.”

“She has an answer for everything,” Renato said, his arm around her waist.

“You won’t like that so much when you’re married,” Antonio said.

“No, no,” Cassie said. “I’ll be the perfect Italian wife. The day after Renato marries me, I’ll put on my apron and sew my lips shut, like his mother and sisters. That’s our deal. But until then”—she kicked a tin can into a chain-link fence at the corner of Sixth and Union—“I’m an American girl to the bone.”

“Let’s try not to talk,” Antonio said, as they turned onto Seventh and slowed their pace. The farther up the hill from Union they walked, the darker it became. There were no streetlamps, and only a few Christmas trees remained lit in the front rooms of the row homes.

“As soon as we’re done,” Renato reminded them, “we run to St. Anthony’s and hide. I know one door that’s never locked. Go through the park, not down Ninth.” He took a deep breath, dropped the bag on the sidewalk in front of the Waters house, then stared at it a moment. The wind shook the dead plants in the flowerpots, making a hissing sound.

To his amazement, Antonio had not considered this obvious hazard: if they threw a sharp steel nail at the window, might it not hit the head—or the eye—of one of the kids asleep on the floor? If they blinded one of them, or caused some other serious bodily harm, how could he live with himself?

Before Antonio could voice this concern, Renato had already crossed the street. At the front steps he turned, faced Antonio and Cassie, undid his belt, pulled his pants down to his knees, and squatted. He moved to the lower step. Then back up to the top step. After he finished, he came toward them with a broad smile, his belt jingling as he relooped it. “Fried eggs,” he said, and covered his mouth to muffle the laughter.

Antonio’s stomach tightened. “That’s enough for this time, probably,” he said, turning toward the glow of Union Street. “We’ll come back another night.”

Cassie reached into the bag and pulled out three big rocks. “I’m just getting started,” she said, and ran into the yard.

“Wait!” Antonio whispered.

The first rock shattered the storm door. Then she hurled the other two, one after the other, with all her might, at the front windows. The crash was so loud that the three of them instinctively covered their ears, as if watching fireworks. Then they ran, leaving the pillowcase on the sidewalk.

The next minutes passed in a blur. Antonio saw only his feet, pumping over asphalt, grass, concrete. He heard a door slam, then another. Someone was calling “Abraham!” again and again, and the name echoed across the field. By the time Antonio reached the church, chased by no one, breathing hard, his drunkenness had evaporated. He felt only fear. His ankles throbbed. He pushed through the back door into the room behind the altar, where the priests dressed, and found Renato and Cassie rolling around on the floor in a fit of giggles. They kissed and tickled each other.

“Do you think he followed us?” Antonio asked.

No answer from the lovers. Soon their coats were off and the straps of Cassie’s dress pulled down to her elbows. Antonio paced in a wide circle around them, trying not to look, until Renato—nuzzling hungrily at her neck—declared it time for him to go home to his wife.

A
NTONIO’S DAUGHTER, WHO
will not have a name until Maddalena wakes, lies just beyond the glass. She is kept warm by four round coils embedded in her see-through crib. She is too fragile to be held by anyone but the doctor and nurses, and it will be weeks, Antonio is told, before they allow him to touch her translucent skin. He can only imagine how it might feel to cup her delicate head in his hands and press his lips to her cheek. They keep her separate from the babies who arrived at the right time, who did
not threaten the lives of their mothers. Her chest rises and falls almost imperceptibly, and once in a while her leg or arm spasms. She rarely cries. Her eyes remain closed, two little slits above a nose the size of his fingernail, two bluish lips. Cracked skin around her fingers and toes. She seems as much his child as Eisenhower is his president.

Maddalena has been unconscious for twenty-four hours. She has been given a private room, away from the other new mothers. Ida sits calmly in the chair beside her bed, knitting a blanket for her niece. “I’m not worried,” she says, the needles clacking between her fingers. “God is giving her the rest she needs. When she gets enough, He’ll wake her up and put her to work again. Until then, she’s building her strength.”

Antonio grows increasingly impatient with Ida. He can’t bear her sunny face, her blind faith. If she weren’t his sister-in-law, he would grab her by the shoulders and shake her. What do you know about anything? he would say. He directs his rage—at Ida, at God, at himself—at the blanket, which Ida has already ruined by using three different colors of yarn of varying thickness. One side curls and twists under itself. He takes the blanket and stretches it as hard as he can, unraveling it from the blue corner. He throws it back in her lap, and she resumes her work as if nothing happened.

The doctor enters the room, lays his hands on Maddalena’s face like a priest, checks her heartbeat, nods, and leaves. He wears a gray suit, and his hair is an unnatural terra-cotta color, his cheeks freckled. Dr. McMenamin. Irish. Antonio follows him, pleading for an explanation, a clear diagnosis, a timeline. But the doctor’s information is as stubbornly repetitive as Ida’s. “We’re in a wait-and-see period” is his favorite answer. Or: “It’s still too soon to worry.”

“How long until it’s not too soon?” Antonio asks, but he only purses his lips.

Antonio does not miss work. He has no choice. Mr. Hannagan
rests his hand on his shoulder. “It’s a tough test,” he says, then reassures him that doctors know what they’re doing nowadays, that it’s not like before. Before what? Antonio wonders. “Just be grateful we give you insurance,” says Mr. Hannagan.

The workforce at the Ford plant has more than doubled in the past year, and now Antonio has not only his boss to answer to but a hierarchy of supervisors who parade up and down the assembly line with clipboards. They take turns keeping watch on each man, standing behind him and off to the side, masking the seriousness of their inspection with small talk and dirty jokes. In the meantime they scribble on the clipboards. No wonder Antonio’s performance rating—posted for all to see on the bulletin board above the card-puncher—has slipped from an “Excellent” five stars to a merely “Good” four; he is too busy feigning delight in the supervisors’ cleverness, telling them how funny they are, how he will have to remember to tell their jokes to his brother. His rating will slip further now, in his distraction. Lunchtime provides no relief, as the men are packed into aluminum picnic tables in the musty break room, where the din is so loud that many never remove the earplugs they wear on the line. This week, Antonio sits on the floor in the corner, in the cool draft of the window. Though the radiator is turned off, the place swelters with the throng of bodies.

Antonio goes from work to the hospital, the hospital to work. He sleeps in the metal rolling chair beside Maddalena’s bed, one arm touching hers at all times. His mother brings him clean clothes in the early morning, and he changes in the men’s room at the other end of the maternity wing. People stop by in the evening: Gianni and his wife, the Fiumas, Ida’s brothers, Father Moravia with his sprinkler and bucket of holy water. Antonio repeats the doctor’s words and sees on their faces the same fear and disbelief the doctor must see on his. On the second day, Renato and Buzzy appear without Cassie or Marcie, having heard the news from Officer Stanley, who
heard it from Mario at Mrs. Stella’s. Antonio cannot look them in the eyes. It seems that all of Wilmington, the network of cousins and uncles and strangers from the Old Country, is whispering about Maddalena. They stand around her, shaking their heads, talking across her pale and unresponsive body. Her arms hang at her sides, and her hands are turned outward. She wears a hospital gown tied loosely around her waist and thick stockings up to her knees. Around her neck her Christmas locket, on her finger her wedding ring, on her face an unchanging and impenetrable blankness.

Three full days pass. Antonio crosses the city from the hospital to Eighth Street. The late-night walk feels familiar, almost instinctual, by now: the screech of distant cars, the milky light from the streetlamps, the men wandering with their dogs.

It is sometime between midnight and dawn. He makes his way through the dark living room of his father’s house, unplugs the radio, and sets it on his shoulder. It is heavy, unwieldy. He carries it back to the hospital, sets it on the floor beside his wife, connects it to an outlet on the other side of the door, and switches it on.

The radio gets no reception on any station. Only static. Still he turns up the volume, brushes the hair behind Maddalena’s ear, and climbs into bed beside her. He will stay here until someone tells him to leave.