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“And it’s all boys, Dominic,” the writer could still hear Mr. Leary saying. The old English teacher had indicated, with a nod of his head, the attractive Calogero girl (Da
“Give Da
The hard parts to write about were the tears in his father’s eyes when he said, “Well, Daniel, if it’s a good school, like Michael says, and if you really want to go there-well, I guess Carmella and I can come visit you there on occasion, and you can come home to Boston on the occasional weekends.” His dad’s voice had broken on the occasion and occasional words, Daniel Baciagalupo would remember on that rainy night when he absolutely could not write-but he kept trying to-in Iowa City.
Da
Da
Finally, young Dan had knocked on the wall between their bedrooms. “I love you! And I’ll come home a lot-every weekend I can!”
“I love you!” his dad had blubbered back.
“I love you, too!” Carmella had called.
Well, he couldn’t write that scene-he could never get it right, Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking.
The chapter titled “Going Away to School” was part of the twenty-five-year-old writer’s second novel. He had finished his first novel at the end of his first year in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he’d spent much of his second and final year revising it. He had been lucky enough, in his senior year at the University of New Hampshire, to have one of the writers-in-residence in the English department introduce him to a literary agent. And his first novel was bought by the first publisher the book was sent to. It would be several years before Daniel Baciagalupo would realize how fortunate he’d been. Possibly, no other student graduating from the Writers’ Workshop that year already had a novel accepted for publication. It had made Da
Da
“No Angel, no Jane?” Ketchum had asked; he’d sounded surprised, or perhaps disappointed.
“It’s not autobiographical,” Da
Maybe Mr. Leary would have called the novel “rather remote,” had that dear man been alive to read it, but Mr. Leary had passed away. Thinking of that Exeter-letter afternoon in Vicino di Napoli, as Daniel Baciagalupo was, he remembered that old Giusé Polcari had died, too. The restaurant itself had moved twice-first to Fleet Street, then to North Square (where it was now)-and Tony Molinari and Paul Polcari took turns at being the maître d’, thus giving themselves a break from the kitchen. Dominic (with his limp) was not maître-d’ material, though he subbed as the first or principal chef, and Da
In those summers he was home from Exeter and UNH-that is, until he married Katie-Da
As for the upcoming academic year, Da
Ketchum had shown up in Durham when Da
“Ketchum, we didn’t have a car in Boston -we sold the Chieftain the same week we arrived-and you don’t have any time to take driving lessons at a place like Exeter,” Da
“Constipated Christ!” Ketchum said. “A college kid who can’t get a driver’s license is no one I want to be associated with!”
Ketchum then taught Da
How can you not see someone as important to you as that? Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking in the Iowa spring rain. More perplexing, his father had not seen Ketchum once in thirteen years. What was the matter with them? But half of Da
THE YOUNG WRITER had jumped ahead to his family’s first meeting with Mr. Carlisle, the scholarship person at Exeter -once again in Vicino di Napoli. Maybe Da
Mr. Carlisle would be crushed that Carmella wasn’t with Da