Last Night in Twisted River (21 page)

Like father, like son: The cook had kept things from his son, and Danny (in grades seven and eight, especially) was of an age to keep things back. He would be thirteen when he began grade seven and first met Mr. Leary; the Baciagalupo boy would be fifteen when he graduated from eighth grade. He was both fourteen
and
fifteen when he showed his English teacher the stories he made up with ever-increasing compulsion.

Despite Mr. Leary’s misgivings about the subject matter—meaning the sexual content, chiefly—the wise old owl of an Irishman never said an unpraiseworthy word to his favorite pupil. The Baciagalupo boy was going to be a writer; in Mr. Leary’s mind, there was no doubt about it.

The English teacher kept his fingers crossed about Exeter; if the boy was accepted, Mr. Leary hoped the school would be so rigorous that it might save young Baciagalupo from the more unsavory aspects of his imagination. At Exeter, maybe the
mechanics
of writing would be so thoroughly demanding and time-consuming that Danny would become a more
intellectual
writer. (Meaning what, exactly? Not quite such a
creative
one?)

Mr. Leary himself was not entirely sure what he meant by the mystifying thought that becoming a more intellectual writer might make Danny a less creative one—if that
was
what Mr. Leary thought—but the teacher’s intentions were good. Mr. Leary wanted all the best for the Baciagalupo boy, and while he would never criticize a word young Dan had written, the old English teacher ventured out on a limb in making a bold suggestion. (Well, it wasn’t
that
bold a suggestion; it merely seemed bold to Mr. Leary.) This happened to be in that almost-mud-season time of Danny’s eighth-grade year—in March 1957, when Danny had just turned fifteen, and the boy and his teacher were waiting to hear from Exeter. That Mr. Leary made the aforementioned “bold suggestion” would (years later) prompt Daniel Baciagalupo to write his own version of Ketchum’s periodic claim.

“All the shit seems to happen in mud season!” Ketchum regularly complained, in seeming refutation of the fact that the cook and his beloved cousin Rosie were married in mud season, and young Dan had been born just before it. (Of course, there was no actual mud season in Boston.)

“Danny?” Mr. Leary asked tentatively—almost as if he weren’t sure of the boy’s name. “Down the road, as a writer, you might want to consider a nom de plume.”

“A
what?”
the fifteen-year-old asked.

“A pen name. Some writers choose their own names, instead of publishing under their given names. It’s called a
nom de plume
in French,” the boy’s teacher explained. Mr. Leary felt his heart rise to his throat, because young Baciagalupo suddenly looked as if he’d been slapped.

“You mean lose the Baciagalupo,” Danny said.

“It’s just that there are easier names to say, and remember,” Mr. Leary told his favorite pupil. “I thought that, since your father changed his name—and the widow Del Popolo hasn’t become a Baciagalupo, has she?—well, I merely imagined that you might not be so terribly
attached
to the Baciagalupo name yourself.”

“I’m
very
attached to it,” young Dan said.

“Yes, I can see that—then by all means you must hang on to that name!” Mr. Leary said with genuine enthusiasm. (He felt awful; he’d not meant to insult the boy.)

“I think Daniel Baciagalupo is a good name for a writer,” the determined fifteen-year-old told his teacher. “If I write good books, won’t readers go to the trouble of remembering my name?”

“Of course they will, Danny!” Mr. Leary cried. “I’m sorry about the nom-de-plume business—it was truly insensitive of me.”

“That’s okay—I know you’re just trying to help me,” the boy told him.

“We should be hearing some word from Exeter any day now,” Mr. Leary said anxiously; he was desperate to change the subject from the pen-name faux pas.

“I hope so,” Danny Baciagalupo said seriously. A more thoughtful expression had returned to young Dan’s face; he’d stopped scowling.

Mr. Leary, who was agitated that he’d overstepped his bounds, knew that the boy went to work at Vicino di Napoli almost every afternoon after school; the well-meaning English teacher let Danny go on his way.

As he often did after school, Mr. Leary did some errands in the neighborhood. He still lived in the area of Northeastern University, where he’d gone to graduate school and met his wife; he took the subway to the Haymarket station every morning, and he took it home again, but he did his shopping (what little there was of it) in the North End. He’d taught at the Michelangelo for so long, virtually everyone in the neighborhood knew him; he’d taught either them or their children. Simply because they teased him—after all, he
was
Irish—didn’t mean that they didn’t
like
Mr. Leary, whose eccentricities amused them.

The afternoon of his ill-conceived “bold suggestion,” Mr. Leary paused in the garden at St. Leonard Church, once again fretting at the absence of an ’
s—
obviously, to the old English teacher, the church should have been named St. Leonard’
s
. Mr. Leary did his confessing at St. Stephen’s, which had a proper’
s
. He simply liked St. Stephen’s better; it was more like a Catholic church anywhere. St. Leonard was somehow more
Italian—
even that familiar prayer in the garden of the church was translated into Italian.
“Ora sono qui. Preghiamo insieme. Dio ti aiuta.”
(“Now I’m here. Let’s pray together. God will help you.”)

Mr. Leary prayed that God would help Daniel Baciagalupo get a full scholarship to Exeter. And there was another thing he’d never liked about St. Leonard, Mr. Leary thought, as he was leaving the garden. He hadn’t gone inside the church; there was a plaster saint inside, San Peregrine, with his right leg bandaged. Mr. Leary found the statue vulgar.

And there was something else he preferred about St. Stephen’s, the old Irishman was musing—how the church was across from the Prado, where the old men gathered to play checkers in the good weather. Mr. Leary occasionally stopped to play checkers with them. A few of those old guys were really good, but the ones who hadn’t learned English irritated Mr. Leary; not learning English was either not American enough or too Italian to suit him.

A former pupil (a fireman now) called to the old teacher outside the fire station on the corner of Hanover and Charter streets, and Mr. Leary stopped to chat with the robust fellow. In no particular order, Mr. Leary then refilled a prescription at Barone’s Pharmacy; in the same location, he paused at Tosti’s, the record store, where he occasionally bought a new album. The one Italian “indulgence” that Mr. Leary loved was opera—well, to be fair, he also loved the way they served the espresso at the Caffè Vittoria,
and
the Sicilian meat loaf Danny Baciagalupo’s dad made at Vicino di Napoli.

Mr. Leary made a small purchase at the Modern, a pastry shop on Hanover. He bought some cannoli to take home for his breakfast—the pastry cylinders were filled with sweetened ricotta cheese, nuts, and candied fruits. Mr. Leary had to confess to loving
those
Italian indulgences, too.

He didn’t like to look up Hanover Street in the direction of Scollay Square, though he walked in that direction to take the subway home from the Haymarket station every school day. South of the Haymarket was the Casino Theatre, and in the near vicinity of the Scollay Square subway station was the Old Howard. At both establishments, Mr. Leary tried to see the new striptease shows on the nights they opened—before the censors saw the shows and inevitably “trimmed” them. His regular attendance at these striptease joints made Mr. Leary feel ashamed, although his wife had died long ago. His wife probably wouldn’t have cared that he went to see the strippers—or she would have minded this indulgence less than if he’d remarried, which he hadn’t. Yet Mr. Leary had seen a few of these strippers perform so many times, in a way he occasionally felt that he
was
married to them. He had memorized the mole (if it was a mole) on Peaches, the so-called Queen of Shake. Lois Dufee—whose name, Mr. Leary believed, was incorrectly spelled—was six feet four and had peroxide-blond hair. Sally Rand danced with balloons, and there was another dancer who used feathers. Precisely what he saw these and other strippers
do
was the usual subject of what he confessed at St. Stephen’s—that and the repeated acknowledgment that he didn’t miss his wife, not anymore. He’d once missed her, but—like his wife herself—the missing-her part had left him.

It was a relatively new habit of Mr. Leary’s—since he had written to Exeter—that, before he finally left the North End every school day afternoon, he would stop back at the Michelangelo and see if there was anything in his mailbox. He was thinking to himself that he had a new confession to make at St. Stephen’s—for it weighed on him like a sin that he’d proposed a nom de plume to the Baciagalupo boy—when he sorted through the mail, which had arrived late in the day. Yet what a good name for a writer Daniel
Leary
would have been! the old Irishman was thinking. Then he saw the pearl-gray envelope with the crimson lettering, and what very classy lettering it was!

Phillips Exeter Academy

Do you finally believe? Mr. Leary thought to himself. No prayer in a churchyard was ever wasted—even in that ultra-Italian garden at St. Leonard. “God will help you
—Dio ti aiuta,”
the crafty old Irishman said aloud, in English
and
Italian (just to be on the safe side, before he opened the envelope and read the letter from the scholarship person at Exeter).

Mr. Carlisle was coming to Boston. He wanted to visit the Michelangelo School and meet Mr. Leary. Mr. Carlisle very much looked forward to meeting Daniel Baciagalupo—and the boy’s father, the cook, and the boy’s stepmother, too. Mr. Leary realized that he may have overstepped his bounds, once more, by referring to the widow Del Popolo as Danny’s “stepmother;” to the English teacher’s knowledge, the cook and the curvy waitress weren’t married.

Naturally, Mr. Leary had overstepped himself in a few other areas as well. While young Dan had told his English teacher that his dad was reluctant to let the boy leave home and go away to school—and Carmella Del Popolo had actually cried at the very idea—Mr. Leary had already submitted his favorite student’s transcripts to the venerable academy. He’d even persuaded a couple of other teachers at the Mickey to write recommendations for young Baciagalupo. Mr. Leary had virtually applied for admission on behalf of Daniel Baciagalupo—all without telling the boy’s father what he was up to! Now, in Mr. Carlisle’s letter, there were references to the family’s need to submit financial statements—something the rather remote cook might be opposed to, it occurred to Mr. Leary, who was hoping he had not overstepped his bounds (again) to the degree that he’d utterly failed with the pen-name plan. The nom de plume had been an embarrassing mistake.

Oh, my, Mr. Leary was thinking—time to pray more! But he courageously took the Exeter letter in hand, together with his little parcel of pastries from the Modern, and he once more sallied forth on Hanover Street—this time not to the garden in the churchyard at St. Leonard but to Vicino di Napoli, where he knew he would find the Baciagalupo boy together with the “rather remote” cook, as Mr. Leary thought of Danny’s dad, and that overweight woman the widow Del Popolo.

The voluptuous waitress had once come to a teacher’s conference with Mr. Leary; her late son, Angelù, had been an open and friendly presence in Mr. Leary’s seventh-grade English class. Angelù had never been among those badly behaved boys who tormented Mr. Leary for dropping the
O’
from his given name. The Del Popolo boy had been quite a good reader, too—though he was easily distracted, as Mr. Leary had told his mother. Then Angelù had dropped out of school, and gone to work in that godforsaken north country, where the lad had drowned like his father before him. (Quite a convincing argument for staying in school, if Mr. Leary had ever heard one!)

But ever since that teacher’s conference with the widow Del Popolo, Mr. Leary had suffered the occasional dreams about her; probably every man who’d met that woman suffered those dreams, the old English teacher imagined. Nevertheless, her name had more than once come up in his confessions at St. Stephen’s. (If Carmella Del Popolo had ever been a stripper at either the Casino Theatre or the Old Howard, they would have packed the place every night!)

With the Exeter letter returned to its envelope, and in his haste to beat a path to the little Italian restaurant, which had become (Mr. Leary knew) one of the most popular eating places in the North End, the owlish Irishman failed to notice the giant white
O’
that one of those badly behaved boys at the Mickey had rubbed with chalk onto the back of the teacher’s navy-blue trench coat. Mr. Leary had not worn the trench coat on his earlier errands in the neighborhood, but now he donned the coat, unseeing; thus he went on his eager but anxious way, marked from behind with a chalk-white
O’
as identifiable (from a block away) as a bull’s-eye.

WHEN IT WAS MUD SEASON
in Coos County in 1967, Daniel Baciagalupo, the writer, was living in Iowa City, Iowa; they had a real spring in Iowa, no mud seasons there. But Danny, who was twenty-five with a two-year-old son—his wife had just left him—was very much in a mud-season frame of mind. He was also writing, at this moment, and trying to remember precisely what they had been talking about in Vicino di Napoli when Mr. Leary, with the letter from Exeter in his jacket, knocked fervently on the door, which was locked. (The staff was finishing its midafternoon meal.)

“It’s the Irishman! Let him een-a!” cried old Polcari.

One of the young waitresses opened the door for Mr. Leary—Danny’s cousin Elena Calogero. She was in her late teens or early twenties, as was the other young waitress assisting Carmella, Teresa DiMattia. Carmella’s maiden name had been DiMattia. As the widow Del Popolo was fond of saying, she was a “twice-displaced Neapolitan”—the first time because she’d come as a child with her family to the North End from Sicily (her grandparents had long before moved from the vicinity of Naples), and the second time because she’d married a Sicilian.