Chapter 20A

In Memphis I was, on purpose, the last one off the plane. I lugged my carry-on at my side and then flung it over my shoulder as I entered the damp, hot daylight on the tarmac. The wrenching familiarity of everything I saw had me thinking: nearly sixteen years to get somewhere, and in five hours I was sixteen years behind.

My mother, Aunt Frances, my sister Ann, and my great-aunt Mary met me at the arrival gate. I braced myself, thinking: All right, let's start using what Martha taught you. You can do this. You have to.

I strode toward them, a calm smile on me, and I saw my mother's eyes pop open.

"Well!" she exclaimed. "Look at *you*!"

I smiled and said, "Hi, mom," and I let her hug me, and I gave her a kiss. From the corner of my eye I saw Aunt Mary grinning at me and saying to Aunt Frances, "My goodness, look at him! Don't he look nice, though." And Aunt Francis seemed goggle-eyed, her big orbs rolling as she tried to figure out how I had changed. And my roundfaced, fourteen-year-old sister who was a younger copy of my mom had her eyes wide open as well, and she muttered, grinning, "Boy, did New York change him! That's what happens in New York. People come back from New York lookin' so sahphisticated 'n everything."

My mother stepped back from me. "My goodness!" She glanced at the others, blushing as she usually did when her face turned red with emotion. Dear mother, always holding back, even when it was harmless. I used to blush exactly that way. Used to.

I went to my Aunt Mary, reaching out for her, smiling. "Aunt Mary, nice to see you."

I gave her a little kiss and she held her face away from me, smiling proudly. "Look just like your daddy, sweetheart."

Then to Aunt Francis, whose eyes got even wider with surprise as I put my arms around her waist. She moved her head back a little, frowning, not used to having me kiss her. I said, "Aunt Francis..." I gave her a kiss. "Sure missed you up there. Uncle Johnny okay?"

She looked at me, confused. "Uncle Johnny?"

"Sure. How's Uncle Johnny doin'?"

"Why you askin'? Somethin' wrong with your Uncle Johnny?"

I smiled sweetly. "Just wanted to know if he's okay."

"Sure he's okay!"

"Good." I kissed her nose. "Still love me?"

She blushed.

I said, "Well, I still love you. Just like I did before I left."

She blushed madly. I kissed her nose again.

I moved to my sister, a teenager who was, and would forever be, practically a complete stranger. She giggled when I hugged and kissed her. She asked eagerly, her eyes glittering, "Didja see the Empire State Buildin'?"

"Oh, yeah. Saw that. Saw everything."

I strode back to my mom, pushing my glasses higher on my nose, feeling them slip down in the humidity that was already gathering on my face.

She tilted her head with a frowning smile. "You get new glasses?"

"Yes."

"Well! You just got fixed up all over, didn't ya?"

I took her arm. "Let's go get my luggage."

We started toward the baggage area, with Aunt Frances whining behind us, "What'd he do? What happened to his glasses?" and Aunt Mary said, "Nothin', Frances. He got new ones, that's all."

We waited a few minutes for the luggage to show up. My mom and Aunt Mary and Aunt Francis stood by the side, staring at me, pointing, talking about me, grinning -- except for Aunt Francis, who still hadn't quite figured it out.

My sister waited beside me. "Didja bring back pitchers of the Empire State Buildin' and the Staten Island Ferry? And the Statue of Liberty?"

"I saw them, but I didn't bring pictures."

She said, her voice dropping. "Oh."

After a moment she said, "I wanted a pitcher of mah brother standin' next to the Empire State Buildin'."

"What do you need a picture for?"

"Ah told mah friends, they don't believe you were there."

"Sure I was. I was everywhere. Why wouldn't they believe you?"

"'Cause I kept tellin' 'em about it, but they don't believe me."

I smiled at her. "Well, I was there. It's just another big, tall building." I gazed at the luggage pouring out of the bin. "I saw Rockefeller Center, Radio City, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum. Saw Carnegie Hall. I saw West Point, the Brooklyn Bridge. Times Square. I saw all of it."

She looked ahead blankly. She said, "I wanted a pitcher of you, standin' in front of the Empire State Buildin'."

I said, "Well, don't you worry. Next time I go, I'll get one."

I didn't understand my sister. I never would.

My luggage appeared and we placed it on a rollaway and a porter carried it out to our car in the parking lot. In those days, the Memphis airport was still a small-town facility whose outdoor parking lot was a stone's throw from the main entrance. We exited through the front doors and the Memphis weather struck me squarely in the face: it was blazing hot outside. Sticky. Stifling. The black porter threw the suitcases into the trunk of the 1956 Ford. My relatives watched me hand the black man a dollar. He grinned and hustled away. We piled into the car.

As soon as the doors closed my Aunt Francis asked me incredulously, "You tipped that niggah a dollah, Speedy?"

"Sure I did."

"You sure getting' to be a big spender."

I grinned at her. "Everybody has to make a living, Aunt Francis."

My mother haltingly steered her way out of the parking lot. Aunt Francis stared at Aunt Mary in the back seat. "You see him tip that porter a dollah?"

Aunt Mary smiled at me and asked in her shrieking voice, "Did you buy anything at Sak's Fifth Avenue? They always have a sale".

"No," I said, "I never made it to Sak's. I bought something at Bloomingdale's, though."

My sister's mouth fell open. "You went to Bloomin'dale's?"

I nodded yes.

My sister looked at her Aunt Mary. "God, he went to Bloomin'dale's."

Aunt Mary shrieked, "What's Bloomin'dale's, sweetheart?"

"Just a store. A big department store."

My sister chided Aunt Mary, "You know what Bloomin'dale's is."

As we drove down Airways Boulevard we passed a newly constructed Holiday Inn. I remembered the last time Martha and I were together in Memphis, when we spent a day at a Holiday Inn. Great, I thought: every building and every street in this town is going to remind me of Martha. I gazed out the window. The sameness. The boredom. The torpor. The bleaching sun. The enervating, choking humidity. The empty sidewalks. The empty stores. The churches, churches, churches, and the revival camps. Signs directing traffic to Elvis Presley's house.

"Did you see the Statue of Liberty?" my sister wanted to know.

"Yes," I said.

"Well, what was it like?"

"It's a big, tall statue sitting in the middle of New York Harbor on a tiny island."

My mother said, "Well, didn't you have a good time?"

"Sure, I did." I opened my window and stuck my elbow outside.

Mom said, driving at twenty-five miles per hour in a forty-fivemile zone with both hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white, "Well, I guess you did! Look at him. You can tell he did, 'cause he won't say so. I guess that means you had a good time. Well, let's see, what happened while you were gone? I had a corn removed, the thing was killin' me so bad, I went to Doctor Stabnik's and told him 'cut it off before it drives me crazy.' And it was hot down here, I mean really really hot! And your daddy's been working at the store, of course, so nothin' new there. And your aunt Margaret's gonna have another baby. And, let's see, what else happened?"

Aunt Frances asked from the back seat, "You were in New York, Speedy? Is that where you went?"

I sighed, "Yes, Aunt Frances."

My Great Aunt Mary shrieked from the other side of the back seat, "Speedy, I hear they have a lotta niggers in New York. Is that true? Did you see a lotta niggers up there?"

I said, "They have a lot of everything in New York, Aunt Mary. Everything."

I thought: god damn, I've got to get out of here. At least I would finish the day with a call to Martha to let her know I arrived home safely.

September, 1957.

I started my sophomore year at Christian Brothers High School. And I kept the paper route and the Saturday delivery job. Those would be, I vowed, my future tickets back to New York. I started a diary, but two months later I had little in Memphis that I considered worth remembering, so I threw it away.

Within three days of arriving at home I typed fifteen- and twentypage letters to Martha and mailed both within a week. I spent a week searching for a thank-you card for her and for Ronnie, and on the inside of Martha's card I wrote "Love You. Steven."

She answered both letters with one. As usual, she handwrote only two or three pages. I had grown to expect as much, especially in light of her workload. Her letter ended with, "P.S.: Ronnie sends her love. She wants you to come back. And Marilyn (remember Marilyn?) thought you were cute. And, honest, we all miss you. Especially Ronnie. Hon, did you make an impression on her! (wink). Miss your salads. Miss your coffee. Miss you."

Her letters had never been markedly intimate. I suppose she thought (and I agreed) that my parents might read them. I saved all of Martha's letters in a shoe box, along with a few incidental papers and other scraps to throw my parents off. And I thought little of the relative brevity of her writing; had she typed them, I supposed, they might have been longer. After a couple of weeks I received a letter from Ronnie. It was funny and informative, and she was gushing over the guy from NYU. The rest of it was so sexually revealing that I simply had no choice but to get rid of it -- had my folks found that letter, there would have been a nuclear holocaust.

Between September and Thanksgiving I wrote several long, plaintive letters asking Martha to suggest some way to get me to New York, or at least out of Memphis and into the northeast. She answered the letters with one, again, asking me to be patient and make my grades at Christian Brothers so that I could get a scholarship to an Eastern school as she had done. But graduation from high school seemed eons away. I knew her suggestion was sensible and was, in the long run, probably my best option. But each day I grew more temperamental, pouring out my frustration into longer and longer letters. I sent shorter letters to Ronnie, who occasionally sent me an article from a book or the New York Times. I received early Christmas cards from both of them.

It was at a big family dinner just before Christmas, with over a hundred of my step-dad's relatives in my Uncle Vic Lobianco's luxurious house, that my step-dad and two of my uncles and my mom and another aunt invited me into a caucus in Uncle Vic's breakfast room.

I had been in the living room talking with several others when my mom approached me and said in a whisper, "Speedy? You wanna come on in the breakfast room?"

"What's in there?"

She said secretively, "Your daddy and Uncle Louie want to have a talk."

"About what? Did I do something?"

"Oh, no. Just a talk."

I entered the little breakfast room and they were all seated around the glass topped table.

My step-dad looked up at me and asked me to sit down. After I took a seat he said, "Speedy, you been growin' up fast, and you've proven you can work hard. You got some brains, and you've been building yourself up on your own. I was tellin' Uncle Vic about you, and Uncle Sammy and Uncle Louie, here. And, uh, we think it's time..." He leaned forward on the table and his voice lowered. "We think it's time you started learnin' some of the family business. Uncle Vic here has a offer for you." He leaned back in his chair and he gestured slightly with his hands. "I don't know if you're interested in this, but... you can do a lot better than a paper route. Might wanna hear what Uncle Vic has to say."

Uncle Vic was a younger man, very Italianate in appearance with dark skin and heavy eyebrows and a thick mop of curly black hair that was turning prematurely gray. He had long arms and long hands and long red fingers. And a thin red mouth, and an eager smile.

He extended his hand across the table. "How ya doin', Speedy?"

I kept my mouth shut, for the time being, about being called Speedy. I shook his hand, and his was warm and rough in mine.

He said, "Hear you been to New York. How you like it up there?"

I shrugged. "It's a little crowded. A lot going on up there."

Uncle Vic nodded, "Yeah, there is. Awful lot. Now, I know you got school to get through and all that, but... maybe we can come up with somethin' here, might get you back up to New York quicker than a paper route will."

That was the prelude to the deal with Uncle Vic. The deal was that Uncle Vic's youngest daughter, a Lobianco, had recently married Michael Sansone, one of my cousins on the Ricci side. The marriage spurred Uncle Vic's interest in some of the Ricci businesses. He was going to invest in the Tremont Caf where I'd spent most of my younger years. This would put him into partnership with the Ricci's and my Aunt Frances and Uncle Johnny, who owned the place. For years the joint had been a simple diner; Uncle Vic was going to expand it into a full-fledged restaurant. Uncle Vic needed someone who knew the Tremont and the clientele, knew the Ricci's and the other families involved, and could work part-time as a kind of floor manager and gobetween.