Mary slid her BlackBerry from her purse, ignored the e-mail, and hit Redial. She listened to the phone ring and ring, but there was no answer at Trish’s mother’s house. Where was Trish now? Was she okay or was she lying dead somewhere? Mary hit End, slid the phone back into her purse, and scanned the city skyline, looking for answers that weren’t there.
She hadn’t gone two steps when a door opened and Elvira Rotunno reappeared, a stocky silhouette in the doorway, her timing too good to be coincidental. She called, “Yo, Mare, did you eat yet?” she asked, which came out like Jeet jet?
“Yes,” Mary lied again. “I gotta run.”
“Why don’t you come in for some dessert? Dom wants to say hi.”
“No thanks, gotta go.” Mary looked around for a cab, or a gun to shoot herself.
“Where you goin’ this time a night?”
“To my parents’,” Mary heard herself answer, though she hadn’t thought of it until this minute. It was a good idea. She needed an escape, a meal, and a hug, but not in that order.
“Hold on then. Dom can give you a ride. You won’t get a cab out here, you know that.”
“I can walk.”
“To your parents’? That’s twenty blocks.”
Mary made a mental note to move. “I’ll get a bus.”
“Here he is.” Elvira was joined at the door by an equally wide silhouette in jeans and an Eagles sweatshirt.
“Ma,” Dominic bellowed. “I can’t drive nowhere, you keep forgettin’. I got no license since the DUI.”
Gulp.
Suddenly a silvery Prius turned the corner and slowed to a stop in front of the rowhouse. “Oh, here’s my Ant’n’y.” Elvira walked down the steps, holding on to the wrought-iron rail. “He can take you home, Mare.” When she reached the sidewalk, she pulled Mary close and whispered in her ear, “I’d fix you up with Ant’n’y, but he’s gay.”
Perfect.
Mary turned in time to see Anthony emerge from the driver’s side of the Prius. She didn’t know him from high school, but she knew only the boys who needed tutoring. Anthony Rotunno looked like a nice guy; tall, slim, and ridiculously well dressed in a brown leather jacket, white shirt, and charcoal pants.
“Ant, this is Mary DiNunzio,” Elvira said, gesturing. “You know Mary. Her parents live down the block from Cousin-Pete-With-The-Nose. Can you give her a ride home?”
“Sure, Mary, climb in.” Anthony smiled, opened the passenger-side door, and gestured her inside while he crossed to the front stoop, kissed his mother on the cheek, and handed her an envelope. “Sorry, Ma, I almost forgot.”
“Love you, Ant. Such a good son.” Elvira gave him an extra kiss on the cheek, and he hustled back to the car and climbed in.
“Thanks for the ride,” Mary said, when he slammed the door.
“Sure.” Anthony put the car in gear and they took off. The car was quiet, with all manner of glowing gauges on the dashboard and a politically correct hum coming from the engine. “It’s the least I can do, after what you did for my mother. She’s in love with her new awning. I never saw somebody so excited about molded plastic.”
“Fiberglass.”
“Excuse me.”
Mary smiled. “It’s the simple things.”
Anthony laughed. “So where we going?”
Mary told Anthony the address and relaxed into the neat little car. She could see in the dim light that he had a handsome profile, with thick, dark hair, big brown eyes, and a slim, straight nose. His cologne was on the strong side, but it only reminded Mary of her old friend Brent Polk, who was also gay. Brent had passed years ago, and she still missed him. She felt instantly comfy with Anthony because of Brent, like a gay associative principle.
Anthony said, “My mother wants to hook you up with Dom. She loves you, and she smells grandchildren. Fee- fi-fo-fum.”
Mary moaned. “Uh-oh.”
“It’s a love match. You can keep him out of jail, free.”
Mary smiled. “So what do you do for a living?”
“I’m on sabbatical from St. John’s to write a book. Nonfiction. I published one modest volume on the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.”
“Interesting.”
“Happily, the critics thought so, and both of my readers agreed. Now I’m working on another, about Carlo Tresca.”
“Who’s he?”
“He was an anarchist, a contemporary of Emma Goldman, who was shot and killed in New York in 1943. His murder was never solved.” Anthony steered the car around the corner, negotiating double-parkers with a native’s skill, and they picked up speed past the rowhouses, lighted front windows, and people walking mutts. “They think it was the Mob who did it, or somebody against the unions he was trying to organize.”
“Whoa.” Mary considered it. “So these are Italian-American subjects.”
“Exactly. I teach Italian-American studies.”
“My life is Italian-American studies.”
Anthony laughed.
“So what do you do about Carlo Tresca? Research the case?”
“Research it and educate people. Right now I’m trying to subpoena the rest of his FBI file, under the Freedom of Information Act. The forms are a real pain.”
“You don’t need a subpoena, just a request.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I can help you with that,” Mary said before she realized she didn’t have the time to help anybody with anything.
“Would you mind if I called you, to pick your brain?”
“Not at all.” Mary dug in her purse for her wallet, extracted a business card, and stuck it on the console as they stopped at a red light.
“Thanks.” Anthony smiled warmly, and Mary felt a pang of sadness for Brent, then for Dhiren and Trish, and for everything that had gone so very wrong.
“It’s good to go home,” she blurted out, her chest suddenly tight.
“It’s always good to go home,” Anthony agreed.
“How nice you come viz’!” Vita DiNunzio cried, meeting Mary in the living room, throwing her soft arms around her, and enveloping her in a hug redolent of old-fashioned Aqua Net and fresh basil.
“Honey!” her father boomed, wrapping her in his embrace, completing the one-two punch of the DiNunzio love attack.
“Hey, Pop, long time, no see,” Mary said, and they laughed, them at her joke, and she at the joyful realization that she could come home whenever she wanted, get loved up, and forget about bad things, at least temporarily. She wanted to drown her sorrows in tomato sauce, having long ago realized she was an emotional eater. After all, what other reason was there to eat?
Her father kept his heavy arm around her, her mother took her other hand, and together they half-led and half-carried her like a parental sedan chair to the kitchen, The Place Where Time Stopped. The small room was bright, ringed with white wood cabinets and white Formica counters, unchanged since Mary’s girlhood. A church calendar on the wall depicted an old-school Jesus against a cerulean background, his eyes so far heavenward the whites showed, and next to him were photos of Pope John, JFK, and Frank Sinatra, attached with yellowed Scotch tape. Wedged behind the switchplate was a brittle spray of palm and Mass cards, the fancy ones laminated. The collection had grown since last month, but Mary didn’t want to think about that.
“So, how are you guys?” she asked, sitting down. On the table were a few old screwdrivers, one with a yellow plastic handle that she would always remember as one of her father’s tools. “You fixing things, Pop?”
