Страница 10 из 147
It was warmer under the covers, from where Da
Dominic Baciagalupo was putting the potatoes on the griddle when Ketchum spoke to him. “There was no way I could let you see her, Cookie-it wouldn’t have been right.”
“I understand,” the cook said.
On the stairs, Da
Dominic had watched Ketchum carry his dead wife along the edge of the containment boom. “Get away from me, Cookie!” Ketchum had called, as he came across the logs. “You can’t see her anymore-she’s not the same as she was!”
The cook, who was also drunk, had taken the blanket from the back of Ketchum’s truck. But Ketchum would not come ashore with the body; even drunk, he had kept walking on the logs with small, rapid steps. “Spread the blanket in the back of the truck, Cookie-then walk away!” When Ketchum came ashore, Dominic was standing at a triangular point-equidistant from the riverbank and Ketchum’s truck. “Just stand your ground, Cookie-till I cover her,” Ketchum had said.
Da
“Didn’t you want to see her?” Da
“I trust Ketchum,” his father had answered. “If anything ever happens to me, Daniel, you trust him, too.”
Da
Da
WHEN YOU’RE TWELVE, four years seems like a long time. A
The boy’s cooking skills were more slowly acquired, and-after the accident-A
It was 1940 when Dominic Baciagalupo met Da
Nunzi had no choice in the matter. Her cousin Maria, another Saetta, had married a Calogero-a common Sicilian surname. “After some Greek saint who died there-the name has something to do with children in general, I think, or maybe orphans in particular,” Nunzi had explained to Dominic. She pronounced the name cah-LOH-ger-roh. It was used as a first name, too, his mother explained-“frequently for bastards.”
At sixteen, Dominic was sensitive to the subject of illegitimacy-not that A
As was often the way “back then”-not only in the North End, and by no means limited to Italian or Catholic families-the Saettas and the Calogeros were sending one family scandal to live with another. Thus A
While A
“Why is she my second cousin?” the boy asked his mom.
“Maybe that’s not what she is-maybe she’s called your cousin once-removed, or something,” Nunzi said. When Dominic looked confused, his mother said: “Whatever she’s called, she’s not really your cousin-not a first cousin, anyway.”
This information (or misinformation) posed an unknown danger to a crippled sixteen-year-old boy. His accident, his rehabilitation, his homeschooling, not to mention his reinvention as a cook-all these-had deprived him of friends his own age. And “little” Dom had a fulltime job; he already saw himself as a young man. Now Nunzi had told him that the twenty-three-year-old Rosie Calogero was “not really” his cousin.
As for Rosie, when she arrived, she was not yet “showing;” that she soon would be posed another problem.
Rosie had a B.S. in education from the teachers’ college; at that time, frankly, she was overqualified to teach at a Berlin elementary school. But when the young woman started to look pregnant, she would need to temporarily quit her job. “Or else we’ll have to come up with a husband for you, either real or imaginary,” A