excerpt
I knew they were telling Italian stories and making family decisions about property and vacations and whether my father should sell his ‘41 Ford and buy a new used car. But I had them gambling for high stakes and getting drunk enough to reveal explosive secrets about the future of the great frontier. At the same time, I knew that Nonno Pasquale was having a birthday. All the rules, routines, and patterns of daily life were temporarily suspended. In a way, I resented it. I wanted to go back in there, nuzzle into Aunt Katy’s lap while she played Chopin on the out of tune upright, her fingers doing their, to me, magical and superhuman duty, while her eyes looked vacantly up through the cracked ceiling into some other life. But I knew that if I went in they’d talk all over me – hey, Georgie, little man, what do you have to say for yourself – and their hands would be patting my head and pinching my cheek, and their smiling, adult attitudes would embarrass me with unanswerable questions about school and what I wanted to be when I grew up, until my dad gave me that look that said, you’ve had enough prince of the realm attention, kid, get your ass off to bed.
It wasn’t bed I minded. I just couldn’t face that gauntlet of bright eyes, flushed cheeks, and unrestrained enthusiasm. So I leaned against the wire fence, a little proud of myself because I was lonely and separate and tired but ready for something I hoped would happen, even though I couldn’t put it into words.
I felt like I owned the whole night, the breeze riffling the leaves of the hard-pruned saw tooth poplars, the quarter moon in its thin wrap of cirrus, the sounds of the city spreading and dying off around me; and I wanted to stay out as late as I could, until someone in there, I hoped it would be my grandfather, came and took my hand and led me in.
A few neighbours were still sitting out on the sidewalk, or on their front stoops, taking the air. The Morgas next door were listening to the Yankee game on a portable radio in a tangerine case Mickey Martin had given Don Andonio for Christmas last year; and across the street, the Scibettas were arguing about money with their kids. I need a ‘vance on my ’lowance mom. Get in here you little bastard, where you gonna spend a ‘vance tonight. Paulie, get im, get im in here. And the grandfather, deep into his zinfandel, was growling and whapping the cards down on the barrel-top with his buddies, playing scopa for a dollar a hand.
It was really boring, this predictable nightlife. I dropped my yo-yo down along its bright new string, and lifted my wrist.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 