Frankie recalled his father telling his wife that the store was losing money; since the supermarkets opened, he’d lost a number of his customers. The ones that had elected to shop with him were the ones to whom he’d extended credit. He had kept a running tab of their purchases, and whenever they received their paychecks or government checks, they wouldpay their bill. And unlike loan sharks, his father didn’t charge them interest.
“Aren’t you going to lose a lot of money if you close for two weeks, Poppa?” he asked.
Kathleen stared at her husband. “You need to tell him, Gio.”
“Tell me what, Mama?”
Gio cleared his throat. “I’m planning to close the store for good when we come back. I’ve finally convinced your mother that we should move out of this apartment and into the brownstone with Nonna, because now that she’s having another baby, this place is too small for five kids. Nonna is giving us the top-floor apartment with five bedrooms.”
Frankie felt a fist of fear squeeze his heart. He didn’t want to move, because he didn’t want to leave his friends. “Where will you work, Poppa?”
“I have a cousin who has a butcher shop on Second Avenue.”
“What about my friends Kenny and Ray?” Frankie asked, as he struggled not to cry. If he was moving to a new neighborhood, then he would have to go to a new junior high school.
“They can always come over on weekends. There will be enough room in the apartment where they can spend the night.”
Knowing he wouldn’t have to lose contact with his friends made Frankie feel a little better. Moving across town meant living in a larger apartment, seeing his grandmother every day, and his extended family for dinner the first Sunday of every month. Knowing he was going to visit Italy for the first time was beyond exciting. Realizing it would be his first time on a plane and meeting relatives he never knew were things he was looking forward to.
“I hope Mama has a boy, because I don’t need another sister.”
Kathleen rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not what you need but what the good Lord gives us.”
“Your mama is right,” Gio said. “All children are gifts from God.”
Frankie wanted to tell his father that his daughters were probably from the devil because, despite the threat they would have to go to parochial school, they’d continued to fight with one another.
Things were happening that he hadn’t anticipated when Ray told him that he and his siblings would spend the next two summers in Puerto Rico, so his parents could work more than one job to save enough money to buy a house in the Bronx. Now his family was moving across town while Kenny would continue living in an apartment half a block from Central Park. Frankie knew he would miss walking to school and sharing classes with Kenny and Ray. However, he knew they wouldn’t lose touch with one another because not only were they friends, but also blood brothers. They’d sworn an oath to stay together, regardless of where the road of life would take them.
“When are we leaving for Italy?”
“The middle of July,” Gio said. “When we come back the first week of August, I’ll start packing up the apartment for the move. I want everyone moved in before the Labor Day weekend. Meanwhile, your mother will see that school records will be transferred to your new schools. It’s going to take a while before I sell out everything in the store, so I’ll be back and forth until that’s done. What I don’t sell, I’ll give away to some of my most loyal customers.”
“It’s going to be a wonderful start for this family when we move into our new place with enough room for everyone,” Kathleen said, smiling. “And come Christmas, not only will we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus, but our own little blessing.”
CHAPTER16
Frank entered the butcher shop to pick up the ingredients he needed to make his Bolognese sauce. He’d called Justine the night before to let her know he would be coming to her apartment Saturday morning around ten o’clock to make an authentic Italian dinner for her. The sauce, made from scratch, would take at least five hours to cook, and that meant he would be able to spend most of the day with her.
He still hadn’t figured out why he felt so drawn to her and knew it only wasn’t because of her race. What confused him was he didn’t think of Justine solely as someone with whom he could have sex, because he enjoyed talking and sharing a meal with her, while discovering her to be more interesting than any other woman he’d encountered before. Since becoming sexually active as a teenage boy, he’d slept with women, and not once had he permitted himself to become romantically involved with any of them. They’d become mere receptacles for his lust.
However, unlike his father, Frank never mistreated a woman because of what he’d witnessed when growing up. It was as if Sal took pleasure in punishing his daughters for what he consideredthe slightest infraction. If they came home ten minutes late beyond their curfew, they were punished. If they didn’t cook the sauce to his liking, they were punished. None were permitted to date because he feared they would sleep with boys and becomeputtane.
The only female exempt from his tyrannical behavior was his wife. He was meek and almost subservient to her. What Frank and Gio didn’t understand is why Gianna D’Allesandro had allowed her husband to come down so hard on her daughters when her sons were exempt.
When Justine asked if he liked being a bachelor, Frank hadn’t lied to her when he answered in the affirmative. He was able to run his businesses, come and go at different hours of the day and night, and not have to answer to anyone but himself. With each passing year, Frank realized he was becoming not only more selfish, but also more discriminating when it came to whom he wanted to interact with. He’d become a successful businessman who was the complete opposite of CEOs of large corporations. He wasn’t transported around in chauffeur-driven limousines, had no standing reservations at the finest restaurants, and didn’t own penthouse apartments high above the city’s noise and streets. He was Francis Michael D’Allesandro, better known in the neighborhood where he’d been raised as Frankie Delano, someone who was respected by many and feared by those who were equally afraid of Salvatore, theSerpente, D’Allesandro.
Frank didn’t drive a flashy car or own gaudy jewelry, and he favored casual attire. The exception was a suit whenever he had a meeting with an investment broker. He rented a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor above a laundromat and checked in on his mother every day. After a long conversation with Gianna, he had decided to accept her advice to move his brother and his family into the brownstone, where they could have more space for Gio’s expanding family. Gianna would get to see her grandchildren every day, and her younger son would be there to check in on her.
It was early morning, and there was only one customer in the butcher shop. Frank nodded to the elderly man behind the counter lined with fresh meat.“Buongiorno!”
“Buongiorno. What can I get for you this morning?” he asked Frank after his customer walked out.
Frank smiled at the man, who’d come to work for his father when he owned the shop, and had continued after Sal had passed away. “I need a pound of ground beef chuck, pork shoulder, lamb shoulder, and a half pound of chicken livers, sausage with garlic and fennel, and pancetta,” he said in Italian.
Guillermo raised bushy white eyebrows. “So, someone is making Bolognese,” he replied in the same language.
Frank nodded. It had been a while since he’d made the sauce which happened to be his favorite, second only to marinara. But only if his mother made the marinara. Not only would he make Bolognese but also an Italian white bean and sausage soup. He waited patiently as Guillermo removed a pork shoulder from the freezer showcase, cut off a portion, then placed it in a scale lined with butcher paper, grinning when it weighed exactly sixteen ounces. Frank didn’t know how the elderly butcher did it, but he was able to visually measure whatever a customer requested to within ounces. Guillermo put the meat in a grinder labeled PORK ONLY, ground the meat and wrapped it in paper, then wrote what it contained with a short nubby pencil.
