Of the many ways in which the old man is disappointed with his daughter-in-law, her cooking is actually the worst. So when he enters his son\u2019s apartment and is greeted by Emilia\u2014an Austrian!\u2014who breezily announces, \u201cI made something special for you, Pop,\u201d it takes all his restraint to nod, to smile, to use his stilted control of English\u2014the only language they share\u2014to say, \u201cThank you. This makes me happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His son\u2019s apartment, however, is no disappointment. Wood paneling, open space, a mild improvement over their first place in Wilkes-Barre, his grandsons huddled around the Philco enjoying a ball game. The old man has never appreciated baseball, but he\u2019s proud Tony and Frankie do, that they\u2019re American in a way he never could be. He nods at them\u2014he has never given affection to little boys\u2014and shakes his son\u2019s hand. Carlo\u2019s grip is strong, and the old man reddens when his son pulls him in for a hug, how free he is with his emotions not only with his family, but with everyone he encounters as one of Scranton\u2019s premier plumbers. Once a week during the old man\u2019s visits to the Cataldo Club, he is annoyed when someone compliments his son\u2019s handiwork and says how friendly<\/em> he is. Friendly<\/em>. It\u2019s not an Italian word.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The old man joins his son at the table and wishes he didn\u2019t have to smell whatever it is Emilia is cooking. The whole apartment reeks of garlic and tomatoes, and he knows exactly where this is headed. \u201cIt\u2019s red sauce and meatballs,\u201d Carlo says to confirm. How many times he\u2019s been served red sauce and meatballs by smiling buffoons even though no one in Italy would ever serve red sauce with meatballs. \u201cYes,\u201d the old man says, agreeing that red sauce and meatballs is indeed what his daughter-in-law is preparing, \u201cred sauce and meatballs.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo,\u201d his son says, leaning back, \u201cthe boys were asking about the old country today. Weren\u2019t you, boys? Come here to Pop.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo, we weren\u2019t,\u201d Tony pleads in his singsong voice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe Yankees!\u201d Frankie cries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBoys.\u201d Carlo snaps his fingers, and they turn off the radio and fall in line around the table. At least Carlo isn\u2019t friendly<\/em> with his sons. The humiliation!\u00a0\u201cTell them something, Pop. Come on. Anything.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emilia calls from the stove. \u201cYou ever run into my parents visiting from Austria?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An Italian would only greet an Austrian with spit or gunfire, and the old man is astonished that the next generation can name all of the New York Yankees while understanding so little about where they came from. The old man knows he has to reveal something but finds himself drawing a blank. He doesn\u2019t like remembering life in the before time. How to convey an entire sunken world through one single memory? He looks at his family, and the same image as always rises\u2014chicken, not prepared by a family member, not served in a bar, but a freshly butchered bird roasting over open flames, the way the flesh popped, how it smelled beneath the stars among the camaraderie of other soldiers. The old man remembers not Favazzina, the southern village where he grew up, not his fisherman father or the stiff stench of his clothes, not his mother forever in a nightgown, making the sign of the cross no matter what news was delivered, not even the caresses of curly-haired Gianna, the girl he assumed he\u2019d one day marry. No, the old man remembers being summoned from his parents\u2019 home, conscripted by the northern government post-unification. He remembers Pontelandolfo, a village very much like his own, how the powers-that-be explained that revolts across the southern half of the peninsula had to be crushed, that the citizens of Pontelandolfo had banded together and murdered forty soldiers. A message must be delivered. Unification, no, the entire soul of newborn Italy depended upon it!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The old man observes his grandchildren and their occasional glances at the silent Philco. He looks at Carlo and Emilia, wondering what they picture when they hear words like \u201cItaly\u201d or \u201cAustria,\u201d perhaps some vague dream of a simpler life, holy soil they know they\u2019ll never step foot in. How could any of them understand marching as a group of five hundred, entering Pontelandolfo armed and ordered to kill? How could they imagine the old man as a young man surrounded by his comrades, mostly teenagers unaware that they\u2019d even been liberated, how they opened fire on the town\u2019s clergy, men, women, and children? His family couldn\u2019t feel the weight of the torches, how the old man and his giddy friends hurled them through the open windows of houses, the dissonance of screams, how the heat from the burning village coupled with the August sun made the old man feel like he\u2019d tumbled outside of his body arriving somewhere that didn\u2019t count, not really, where anything could happen and where everything would be forgiven. They burned Pontelandolfo to dust, and, as they listened to the gunfire and cries, they feasted. Chicken roasting on open flames just beyond the fighting and all the wine they could drink. Later, the old man wondered if the government had plied them with food and alcohol just in case the soldiers were considering joining up with the people of Pontelandolfo, who resembled their own families praying for their safe returns back home. But the truth was they would\u2019ve followed orders no matter what, that they loved being told what to do, that at the end of the day none of these decisions were theirs. It was the north. Always the north.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The old man remembers the priest they hung outside the village, how for the rest of the evening he and his friends took turns shooting at the rope above his snapped neck, how they missed and missed, laughed and laughed. He looks at his moon-faced family and wonders what exactly to say about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of the many ways in which the old man is disappointed with his daughter-in-law, her cooking is actually the worst. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6232,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[6,143,1793],"class_list":["post-6226","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-fiction","tag-salvatore-pane"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n