The Saint of Lost Things (7 page)

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.

The two men sit in silence. When Waters gets up to leave, it is nearly noon. “You heading back?” he asks, and Julian says no, though he’s shivering and needs to urinate.

“Church,” Julian says, and ticks his head toward St. Anthony’s. He’s had no intention of attending, but he certainly cannot walk with Waters back to Seventh Street, not unless he wants a lot of questions from his neighbors. “I will pray for your son. If that does any good.”

“Can’t hurt,” Waters says. Then, just before he passes through the gate, he stops. “You know what else? Sing a song for him, too. A good one. He used to mention your voice.”

A rush of heat to Julian’s face.
“My
voice?” he says. “I don’t understand.”

“We listened to you across the way, this summer, with the, uh—” He pumps his arms in and out.

“The accordion?”

“Yeah. It was nice. My Abe would make remarks about it. He’s got some pipes on him, too. From his mother, no doubt. Not from me. He used to mention wanting to sing and play guitar.”

“I—I didn’t—” Julian responds, but Waters has already reached the sidewalk.

Julian sits up straight on the hard bench. His lower back throbs. He is sweating. The church bell strikes the hour, and the Sunday morning congregation begins to climb the hill. He knows most of the families—Gaetano DiNardo, the Arienzos, Emidio and Evelina Castellani, Gianni Martino and his round little wife. La Polpetta, the meatball, his father used to call her. Women in fur shawls walk arm in arm, their men lagging a few steps behind. Father Moravia, the pastor, stands outside in his white robe to welcome his flock.

It’s bad luck to lie about Mass, Julian decides, and guilts himself into attending. In his faded corduroys and a cardigan with a coffee stain on the sleeve, he is not dressed properly, so he buttons his coat to the neck and makes his way unnoticed past Father Moravia. He uses the men’s room, then sits in one of the pews in the far back. Thoughts of the Waters family fill his mind. He lowers his head, in no mood to make conversation with the neighbors.

St. Anthony’s is a beautiful church, with panel after panel of stained glass on both sides of the aisle. Behind the altar, the fading light shines through the enormous rose window. It inspires him, this castle of stone, with its shiny gold sunburst and thundering organ. Whisper, and your voice echoes across fifty pews. Julian should come here every morning for the early service, if just to coax himself out of bed. He gave up on God after his confirmation over twenty-five years ago, to his mother’s great sadness and shame; but maybe now that she and his father are gone, it is time to return to the Lord. If he begins every day, not just Christmas and Easter, with Jesus, maybe He’ll help walk Julian through this strange afterlife.