Last Night In Twisted River

at times close to swooning, but she was easy to support-she had to be more than a hundred pounds lighter than Jane, and Carmella was alive.)

But even before they left Vicino di Napoli that afternoon-when Danny’s head was still held fast in the distraught mother’s lap-Daniel Baciagalupo recognized another trick that writers know. It was something he already knew how to do, though he would not apply it to his method of writing for a few more years. All writers must know how to distance themselves, to detach themselves from this and that emotional moment, and Danny could do this-even at twelve. With his face secure in Carmella’s warm grip, the boy simply removed himself from this tableau; from the vantage of the pizza oven, perhaps, or at least as far removed from the mourners as if he were standing, unseen, on the kitchen side of the serving counter, Danny saw how the staff of Vicino di Napoli had gathered around the seated Carmella and his kneeling dad.

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, Danny would soon learn; being a busboy would be Danny’s first job at Vicino di Napoli.)

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 Pieta 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 Danny had refused. Daniel Baciagalupo was proud of his name-he even took some rebellious pride in what his father had told him of his name’s history. All the years those West Dummer kids had called him a Guinea and a Wop made young Dan feel that he’d earned his name; now, in the North End (in an Italian neighborhood), why would he want to lose the Baciagalupo? Besides, the cowboy-if he came looking-would be trying to find a Dominic Baciagalupo, not a Daniel.

Dominic didn’t feel the same way about his surname. To him, Baciagalupo had always been a made-up name. After all, Nunzi had named him-he’d been her Kiss of the Wolf, when in reality it would have made more sense for him to have been a Saetta, which he half was, or for his mother to have called him a Capodilupo, if only to shame his irresponsible father. (“That-a no-good fuck Gennaro,” as old Joe Polcari would one day refer to the flirtatious, fired busboy who’d disappeared-only God knew where.)

And Dominic had lots of last names he could have chosen. Everyone in Annunziata’s enormous family wanted him to become a Saetta, whereas Rosie’s innumerable nieces and nephews-not to mention his late wife’s more immediate family-wanted him to be a Calogero. Dominic didn’t fall into that trap; he saw in an instant how insulted the Saettas would be if he changed his name to Calogero, and vice versa. Dominic’s nickname at Vicino di Napoli, where he was almost immediately apprenticed to the first chef, Tony Molinari, and the pizza chef, Paul Polcari, would be Gambacorta-“Short Leg,” an affectionate reference to his limp-which was soon shortened to Gamba (just plain “Leg”). But Dominic decided that, outside his life in the restaurant, neither Gambacorta nor Gamba was a suitable surname-not for a cook.

“What about Bonvino?” old Giuse Polcari would suggest. (The name meant “Good Wine,” but Dominic didn’t drink.)

Buonopane (“Good Bread”) would be Tony Molinari’s recommendation, whereas Paul Polcari, the pizza chef, was in favor of Capobianco (“White Head”)-because Paul was usually white all over, due to the flour. But these names were too comical for a man with Dominic’s sober disposition.

Their first night in the North End, Danny could have predicted what his dad would choose for a new last name. When father and son walked the widow Del Popolo to her brick tenement building on Charter Street-Carmella lived in a three-room walk-up near the old bathhouse and the Copps Hill Burying Ground; the only hot water was what she heated on her gas stove-young Dan could see far enough into his father’s future to envision that Dominic Baciagalupo would (so to speak) quickly slip into the drowned fisherman’s shoes. Although her late husband’s shoes didn’t actually fit Dominic, Carmella would one day be happy to discover that Dominic could wear the unfortunate fisherman’s clothes-both men were slightly built, as was Danny, who would soon be wearing Angel’s left-behind clothes. Naturally enough, father and son needed some city attire; people dressed differently in Boston than they did in Coos County. It would come as no surprise to Danny Baciagalupo, who wouldn’t (at first) take Ketchum’s advice and change his last name, that his dad became Dominic Del Popolo (after all, he was a cook “of the people”)-if not on that first night in the North End.

In Carmella’s kitchen was a bathtub bigger than the kitchen table, which already had the requisite three chairs. Two large pasta pots were full of water-forever hot, but not boiling, on the gas stove. Carmella did next to no cooking in her kitchen; she kept the water hot for her baths. For a woman who lived in a cold-water tenement, she was very clean and smelled wonderful; with Angel’s help, she had managed to pay the gas bill. In the North End in those days, there weren’t enough full-time jobs for young men of Angel’s age. For young men who were strong enough, there were more full-time jobs to be found in the north country, in Maine and New Hampshire, but the work there could be dangerous-as poor Angel had discovered.

Danny and his dad sat at the small kitchen table with Carmella while she cried. The boy and his father told the sobbing mother stories about her drowned son; naturally, some of the stories led them to talk about Ketchum. When Carmella had temporarily cried herself out, the three of them, now hungry, went back to Vicino di Napoli, which served only pizza or quick pasta dishes on Sunday nights. (At that time, the Sunday midday meal was the main one for most Italians.) And the restaurant closed early on Sundays; the chefs prepared a dinner for the staff after the evening’s customers had gone home. Most other nights, the restaurant was open for business fairly late, and the cooks fed themselves and the staff in the midafternoon, before dinner.

The aged owner and maitre d’ had been expecting the three of them to return; four of the small tables had been pushed together, and the place settings were already prepared for them. They ate and drank as at a wake, pausing only to cry-everyone but young Dan cried-and to toast the dead boy they’d all loved, though neither Danny nor his dad would touch a drop of wine. There were the oft-repeated “Hail Marys,” many in unison, but there was no open coffin to view-no nightlong prayer vigil, either. Dominic had assured the mourners that Ketchum knew Angel was Italian; the river driver would have arranged “something Catholic” with the French Canadians. (Danny had given his dad a look, because they both knew that the woodsman would have done no such thing; Ketchum would have kept everything Catholic, and the French Canadians, as far away from Angel as possible.)

It was quite late when Tony Molinari asked Dominic where he and Danny were spending the night; surely they didn’t want to drive all the way back to northern New Hampshire. As he’d told Ketchum, Dominic wasn’t a gambler-not anymore-but he trusted the company he was in and (to his own and Danny’s surprise) told them the truth. “We can’t ever go back-we’re on the run,” Dominic said. It was Danny’s turn to cry; the two young waitresses and Carmella were quick to comfort the boy.

“Say-a no more, Dominic-we don’t-a need to know why, or who you’re running from!” old Polcari cried. “You’re-a safe with us.”

“I’m not surprised, Dominic. Anyone can see you’ve been in a fight,” Paul, the pizza chef, said, patting the cook’s shoulder with a sympathetic, flour-covered hand. “That’s one ugly-looking lip you’ve got-it’s still bleeding, you know.”

“Maybe you need stitches,” Carmella said to the cook, with heartfelt concern. But Dominic dismissed her suggestion by shaking his head; he said nothing, but all of them could see the gratitude in the cook’s shy smile. (Danny had given his dad another look, but the boy didn’t doubt his father’s reasoning for not explaining the circumstances of his lip injury; that father and son were on the run had nothing to do with the questionable character and aberrant behavior of Six-Pack Pam.)

“You can stay with me,” Tony Molinari said to Dominic.