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“You gotta sit down, Carmella,” old Polcari was saying, as he retreated toward the kitchen, where the others were hiding. “This is that cook and his son, from up-a north-you know, Angelù’s buddies.”
The woman, who was already radiant, brightened even more. “You are Dominic?” she cried, pressing the cook’s temples with her palms. By the time she turned to Da
Dominic only now realized why there’d been so little money in Angel’s wallet, and why they’d found next to nothing among the dead boy’s few things. Angel had been sending his earnings to his mother. The boy had begged rides to the post office with Injun Jane; he’d told Jane that the postage to Canada was complicated, but he’d been buying money orders for his mom. He’d clearly been faithful about writing her, too, for she knew how the cook and his son had befriended her boy. All at once, she asked about Ketchum.
“Is Mr. Ketchum with you?” Carmella said to Da
Years later, when he’d grown accustomed to being a writer, Daniel Baciagalupo would think it was only natural, what happened then, back in the kitchen. They were not cowards; they were just people who loved Carmella Del Popolo, and they couldn’t bear to see her hurt. But, at the time, young Dan had been shocked. It was Paul Polcari, the pizza chef, who started it. “An-geh-LOO!” he wailed.
“No! No! No!” his elderly father sang.
“Angelù, Angelù,” Tony Molinari called, more softly.
The young women and the kid about Angel’s age were crooning the dead boy’s name, too. This chorus from the kitchen was not what Carmella had hoped to hear; they made such a dismal howl that the poor woman looked to Dominic for some explanation, seeing only the sorrow and panic in his face. Da
A chair had been pulled out from the table nearest them-old Polcari’s departing gesture, even before he had bid Carmella to sit down-and Carmella not so much sat in the chair as she collapsed into it, the olive-brown color abandoning her face. She had suddenly seen her son’s wallet in young Dan’s small hands, but when she’d reached and felt how wet and cold it was, she reeled backward and half fell into the chair. The cook was quick to hold her there, kneeling beside her with his arm around her shoulders, and Da
She wore a silky black skirt and a pretty white blouse-the blouse would soon be spotted with her tears-and when she looked into Da
“Not Angelù!” she cried.
One of the chefs in the kitchen now rhythmically beat on a pasta pot with a wooden spoon; like an echo, he called out, “Not Angelù!”
“I’m so sorry,” young Dan heard his dad say.
“He drowned,” the boy said, from Carmella’s lap; he felt her hold his head more tightly there, and once again the immediate future appeared to him. For as long as he lived with his dad and Carmella Del Popolo, Da
“Not drowned!” Carmella screamed over the clamor from the kitchen. Da
“These are good people,” old Polcari was saying; this sounded like a prayer. It was later that Da
But even before they left Vicino di Napoli that afternoon-when Da
Old Polcari stood behind Carmella, with one hand on the nape of her neck and the other hand on his heart. His son Paul, the pizza chef, stood in his aura of flour with his head bowed, but he had symmetrically positioned himself at Carmella’s hip-perfectly opposite to the hip where Dominic knelt beside her. The two young women-waitresses, still learning their craft from Carmella-knelt on the floor directly behind young Dan, who, from the distance of the kitchen, could see himself on his knees with his head held in Carmella’s lap. The other cook-the first or principal chef, Tony Molinari-stood slightly apart from the rest of them with his arm around the narrow shoulders of the kid about Angel’s age. (He was the busboy, Da
But at this exact and sorrowful moment, Daniel Baciagalupo took in the whole tableau from afar. He would begin writing in the first-person voice, as many young writers do, and the tortured first sentence of one of his early novels would refer (in part) to this virtual Pietà on that April Sunday in Vicino di Napoli. In the novice writer’s own words: “I became a member of a family I was unrelated to-long before I knew nearly enough about my own family, or the dilemma my father had faced in my early childhood.”
“LOSE THE BACIAGALUPO,” Ketchum had written to them both. “In case Carl comes looking for you-better change your last name, just to be safe.” But Da