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separating her from her family, but he trusted that one day she’d thank him for giving her a bigger life. He’s been waiting for that gratitude ever since, but she is stubborn and still angry, and maybe he deserves it, but maybe, too, this trip will show her he’s been right all along.
    He wishes he could see Maddalena as she was then, climbing the stairs to the terrace in her sister’s blue sundress, holding her mother’s hand. It was a cool night and she wore a shawl, but after she’d seen Antonio waiting for her at the bar, she removed the shawl. As they danced, cheek to cheek, left side, then right side, he couldn’t take his eyes from her shoulders. Th at she had left them there, bare, for him to admire, was a sign. A week later, they were husband and wife.
    Antonio and Mario opened the American version of the Al Di Là in 1955. Th eir father was gone by then, and with him went the daily reminders of the inferiority of Italy. Slowly, as the restaurant grew into a success, memories of the Old Country, the innocence between the wars, found Antonio. He and Mario talked about buying back their old house in Santa Cecilia, making it a second home for their families. More and more Italians, Antonio included, left the city for the suburbs and surrounded themselves with the Irish and Polish and, worse, people who couldn’t even tell you what their blood was made of. In the years after moving out of Little Italy, Antonio came to feel fear, not pride, when Prima spoke perfect English to her friends without the hint of an accent. He searched through the basement for the trunk of clothes he wore as a child and asked Maddalena to dress Tony in his old short pants and jackets and noticed, as if for the first time, the high quality of the material. Th e American brands they paid a fortune for in the stores seemed cheap by comparison. He became one of those fathers who told the same stories from his youth long after his kids stopped listening, and as he got older, it occurred to him that he did not tell these stories to teach Prima and Tony and Frankie about their heritage but to keep the stories alive for himself. Th e Italy of the 1920s and 1930s—the mountains in his bedroom window, the young women in furs taking their passeggiate, the horse-drawn carriages bringing food and mail to Santa Cecilia from the cities—came to him in dreams, and when he woke he’d feel guilty, like he’d been cheating on America, until he learned that he could love them both, but differently, the way he loved his children.
    He took nostalgia’s hand, and it pulled him under. Th en Tony died, and grief held him there. He’s been drowning ever since. If Antonio can get back to Santa Cecilia, where his son never walked or slept or played the piano or looked up at his father with love and need, maybe he will breathe again. And if he takes his last breath there, so be it.
    In the meantime, he has business to finish. Th e first call he made after Prima’s announcement was to DiSilvio to set up this meeting. Th e way it stands today, Maddalena gets the Al Di Là and every penny of the savings. Th en after she goes, the kids and grandkids split the savings that are left: 40 percent to Prima, 40 percent to Frankie, 5 percent each to the boys. Fair and square. Th e problem is the afterlife of the Al Di Là. He can’t count on Prima or Frankie. Th ey don’t love the place the way Tony did. Worse: they have their own lives. Th ey don’t come to the Al Di Là much as it is. After he’s gone, they’ll let things go, make too many friends, trust the wrong people, lose trust in each other. So he will go over the will and the restaurant papers again. He doesn’t know what the papers will tell him and DiSilvio today that they didn’t tell them last year or five years ago, but he needs DiSilvio at least to help him think.
    Antonio always thought both Mario and Tony would be around for this part. Since the day the Al Di Là opened, it was the two Grasso