All This Talk of Love

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Book: Read All This Talk of Love for Free Online
Authors: Christopher Castellani
brothers running the show together, and their two sons who would take it over. He never imagined putting all three men in the ground, one at a time, his brother at fifty-five, his nephew at twenty, his son at fifteen. Without Mario, there’d be no Al Di Là in the first place. Antonio would still be working for peanuts on the assembly line at Ford.
    Every Sunday, after he drops Maddalena off at church, Antonio drives to the cemetery. Th e cemetery is his church: the headstones and the dirt and the fresh air and flowers. Half a day it takes to visit the people he knows. So many Italians came to this country over the years. Some paid a lot of money to get buried back in their village, but most ended up here. Giulio Fabbri and Gianni Martino are on the far side near the highway, both waiting for their wives to join them. Mario’s in the quieter part, under a thick stone with an angel and deep engravings that Antonio wipes clean of grime. For his son, Antonio chose a crypt in the St. Jude section, high up off the ground but not so high he can’t place his lips and palms against it. Next to Tony is a spot with his own name. Beside him, Maddalena.
    He doesn’t believe in anything after, like she does. He won’t see Tony or Mario or Mamma or Papà or his friends again in heaven. Maddalena and his kids won’t see him or each other. Th ere’s no big garden party with butterflies and fountains and trays of pastries. He’d bet money on it, if he could ever collect the winnings.
    How is Antonio spending his last days? First of all, he doesn’t sleep. He puts his head on the pillow and closes his eyes, but sleep never finds him. At seven o’clock he gets out of bed to make the coffee. He eats two Stella D’oro cookies and sits in his chair in the den. He watches the local news and Th e Flintstones . Eight thirty he brings coffee to Maddalena. Eight fifty-five on the stove clock he makes sure she’s out the door for church. If it rains or is too cold, he drives her. If the weather’s good, she walks. He reads the American paper on the toilet for a good long hour, and by then she is home and has made the bed and started the day’s cleaning. He showers and shaves and checks the VCR to make sure it’s taping her soap opera. Th en he takes the car to Union Street and eats lunch at the Al Di Là with the Corriere della Sera . Lunchtime is busy. Th ey get a lot of businessmen, and most of the time he has to give up his seat, which he is happy to do. After the rush, he makes sure the tables are set for dinner and the silverware is clean. Sometimes he walks over to Eighth Street to visit Mario’s widow, Ida, all alone in her big house. She has a broken right leg and a knee replacement in the left, and since her husband died and her son got killed in Vietnam she’s never had a happy thing to say. “We had some good years,” he reminds her. “When we lived here all together, us and Mario and Mamma and Papà. You don’t remember the Sunday dinners and the bingo games and Nina’s little dog?” But she makes a face and turns up her game shows.
    For dinner, Antonio brings something home from the restaurant, or he just fixes it himself for the two of them. Little by little over the years, Maddalena stopped cooking. She’s in the kitchen one day out of 365: Christmas Eve, to fry the fish. No other husband in America has cooked as many meals or washed as many dishes as he has, but he doesn’t mind. He just wants a little credit once in a while.
    After dinner he drives back to the Al Di Là, stays an hour to shoot the shit and look over the receipts, then hits the Amerigo Vespucci Club to play bocce. Yesterday he beat the new guy, Tomasso, who’s ten years younger and some kind of champion from Trenton. If you win, the club buys you a drink, but Antonio doesn’t drink much anymore. He lost the taste for it. Soda and iced tea and coffee are enough, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t sleep? Th e doctors don’t believe him when he

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