"Dad?" Brian raised his voice and called again to the stooped figure in the next room. From where Brian and his sister sat, mugs still half full on the kitchen table, it appeared that their father had slumped a little lower in the wheelchair. The television screen glowed, a wild-eyed commentator was jabbering silently, perhaps about some local politician's latest indiscretion or the threat of tornadoes in the heartland, but their father did not seem to be paying attention. No reply came, even after Brian called a third time. "You think he's all right?"
"He hasn't lost his hearing, but sometimes I forget." Frannie shrugged. "When he just sits there, staring into the distance—at the wall, maybe—and doesn't answer . . ." Her voice trailed off. Both of them peered through the doorway into the adjacent room. "But I suppose it's just that he can't be bothered to answer. Why should he?" She kept her voice low. The former dining room had been transformed into their father's bedroom—the sleek Danish table that had been with the family for more than 35 years and in four countries had been moved to the basement to make way for a sturdy hospital bed. Since the stroke, he was no longer able to get himself up and down the narrow stairs to his old bedroom, and even the combined efforts of the three children were scarcely enough to carry him from the second floor to the first. A concession to practicality had to be made. Joseph Aloysius McCready was adamant about one thing, though: if he moved, then so did the small framed photograph of his late wife, captured laughing in Rome's Piazza Navona with the triton of Bernini's monumental fountain in the background. But that was a long time ago, in another country.
Brian started to sigh, thought better of it, and tried to swallow the sigh. There was already too much sighing going on in the family these last several months. And God knows his sister didn't have to hear another one from him. He had not driven nearly three hours to issue a sigh at The Pity of It All. Not when Frannie and Margaret Mary were on the scene helping, sometimes around the clock. They did not need to hear Brian expressing his helplessness, on those weekend visits once or twice a month. Not when he wasn't at the kitchen table day after day to rotate their father's plate so he could see the food that one half of his brain insisted was not there. Not when Brian didn't clean and diaper his father, who no longer had control over his bodily functions. Brian winced: bodily functions was a goddamn euphemism, and what did it tell him that he even shied away from the more precise words? Good thing he and his wife, Sue, could make the trip down, bring some slightly artificial, slightly desperate cheer with them, and slink away at the end of the evening meal. Well, it was Brian doing the slinking, not Sue. Even after twenty years of marriage, Sue seemed not to have been infected by Brian's irresolute ways. Losing her would be more than he could bear, and he understood again—an icy stab of pain in his gut—how his father felt. And Brian understood again how little he could do for him.
Joseph Aloysius McCready: that was the name of a born storyteller if ever there was one. Sometime during their first year of marriage, when Brian and Sue would come for a very different kind of visit, Joe McCready asked the newest member of the family, "Did I ever tell you about the first time I witnessed the Muharram observances?" Brian, Frannie, and Margaret Mary had heard it many times before, and the tale still retained some power—but for Sue it was all new. On that occasion, Joe's wife Peggy was probably drying dishes, smiling to herself, allowing her husband his moment as center of attention. "I was in Baghdad—this was before Peggy and the kids arrived, in 1955, I believe, and I went with Broyle and a couple other fellows from the embassy to the Scheherazade Hotel on Haroun al-Rashid Street. We sat in the hotel's garden under a large palm tree, with a great view of the Tigris and Kadhimain, one of the Shiite holy cities, on the other bank. We ordered Heinekens, as I recall—some things never change, eh, Sue? There was a clerk from Iran who worked for us in the consulate, translating Arabic and Iranian, and he was the one who suggested that we bring field glasses to see what he called a rather remarkable sight. It was indeed! As a relative newcomer, I had heard vaguely that the feast of the Tenth of Muharram was very important and sacred, but to be honest I didn't really know what it was all about."
"But that didn't stop you from having an opinion about it?" said Margaret Mary wickedly.
But he just laughed. "Well, no doubt I had an opinion about it, but my opinion after the fact was a little sounder, I think. It's the anniversary of the martyrdom of Husain, the Fourth Imam and grandson of Muhammad. So we were out in the garden of the hotel, sipping our beers, and soon enough we could hear large crowds chanting at the top of their lungs. With the loudspeakers, their voices carried easily across the river. There were no women in sight. Then the procession began—what seemed like an endless line of young men, many in thin white robes, some with bare backs. They were all shouting prayers, but what took me by surprise is that they were all striking the backs of the men in front of them with some kind of lash! Flagellation, by God! Except that instead of striking themselves—the way we often think about the flagellants of medieval Europe—they were striking each other! After a few minutes, with the help of our field glasses, we could see that these fellows were actually drawing blood. Their backs and their robes were running red!"
"And the shallows along the shore of the Tigris were turning noticeably red, too, if I remember," interrupted Brian.
"If I didn't have so many distractions here, maybe I'd be able to tell my story properly!" replied Joe McCready, brows working furiously. "Sue, you see what I have to put up with? It's my miserable lot in life to have such ungrateful, disbelieving children! What a pleasure to have someone like you at the dinner table once in a while."
"Don't mind them, Joe. It's fascinating."
"But tell her more about the flagellants," said Frannie. "You see, it was a special kind of flagellation."
"Sounds kind of kinky," said Sue doubtfully.
"No, no," insisted Joe, "it's perfectly acceptable and traditional in the Muslim faith, just as it is in Catholicism. At least it was back then. Who knows what happened after the Second Vatican Council, Lord preserve us all! Flagellation was a visible sign of penance, a quest for purification and all that. But these people in Baghdad back in Fifty-Something were part of a kind of passion play to commemorate the sufferings of Husain—and these observances were going on at the same time in Najaf and Karbala."
"Well, all I can say is I'd like to have been the last person in line—with nobody behind me to return the favor," said Frannie.
"Oh, let them mock and quibble. Just imagine the scene, Sue, the blood of thousands, all of them marching in a kind of trance of devotion—oh, I hope that's politically correct. Some years, you supposedly could smell the blood all the way across the river. I can't say I did and I can't say I didn't. Maybe it was just thinking about it that made me imagine I smelled it. Look, it brings gooseflesh to my arm even now." And he thrust his arm in her direction as evidence.
Today, that same arm rested limply in his lap as Joe McCready sat in his wheelchair.
Earlier in the afternoon, in the course of their meal, all of them had made an effort to elicit some response from the patriarch. None of them—Brian, Sue, Frannie, Margaret Mary, and Margaret Mary's husband, Ed—had had much success. These days, Joe himself rarely spoke unless asked a direct question, and even then he answered tersely, with no sense of involvement.
"Joe, I was thinking about your couple of years in Iraq," Sue said, drawing his momentary attention from across the table. "Why didn't you and Peggy collect Arabic music the way you collected Italian and French and Greek records?"
"Oh, we had some," he replied. "A few. Peggy never got very far with the language, and I didn't get much farther than she did. She felt it sounded all pretty much the same." He paused, as if wondering whether to continue. "If we'd been there longer than a year and a half, perhaps. . . . But if Peggy didn't like it much, it wouldn't get played. She had the ear."
"And she had the say, didn't she," added Brian. "She had the turntable humming."
"Sure." Joe had said enough. He pushed some of his food with his fork, held in his good hand.
"I guess there was no Arabic Elvis like there was an Italian Elvis," said Sue. "That probably made a difference."
"An Italian Elvis?" asked Frannie. "Who was that?"
"Brian?"
"Oh, you mean Bobby Solo—at least that was his stage name. He was in the Crooning Elvis mode, not the Rocking Elvis mode. We're talking 1964, 1965. His first big song was 'Una Lacrima Sul Viso,' I think, which translates as 'A Tear on the Cheek.' Young Bobby Solo obviously patterned himself on the Elvis who sang 'Loving You' and 'Can't Help Falling in Love' and songs like that."
"And hokum like 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' " asked Frannie. "Well, I don't remember Bobby Solo—but, then," she added, leaning over to tweak Brian on the cheek, "I'm the youngest, not as old as Brian here!"
"'Bobby Solo' has the same number of syllables as 'Elvis Presley,'" said Margaret Mary.
"Thanks for that bit of insight," replied Brian. He turned to Sue. "The opening lines of Bobby Solo's hit go something like 'From a tear on the cheek, I understood many things.' Such as, you see, that the woman actually loves him."
"How nice," said Frannie. "I preferred the shouters who rocked more. Who's that guy who sang about the 24,000 kisses? More to my taste."
"Yeah, you've always been the wild one in the family, eh, Frannie?"
"How about you, Dad?" asked Frannie, ignoring him. "Any favorites among the Italians?"
Mr. McCready tilted his head slightly. "They're all the same to me. It was a long time ago." He seemed to be making an effort not to be overly curt—for Sue's sake?
An hour after their dinner, while there was still daylight, they were pushing Joe McCready in his wheelchair along a path in a small park not far from the house. Through the trees and shrubs, they could glimpse the park's centerpiece, a manmade pond.
"Where are the geese?" asked Sue, "or are they ducks, I can never tell the difference."
"I'm not the person to ask, either," said Brian, maneuvering the wheelchair over a few cracks in the paved path. "Dad?"
"Don't know," he replied in his disinterested voice. "They're all birds of a feather. Doesn't make any difference."
Brian laughed. "Doesn't make any difference! Is this the man who gave me a lecture about Sunni versus Shiite Muslims and about the various aristocratic rivalries in Dante's Florence? What were they, Ghibellines and Gherkins, wasn't it?"
"Dante's dead, in case you haven't noticed."
"Thanks, Dad, for clearing that up. I've got a good mind to leave you right here nel mezzo della vostra vita and let the geese come and honk at you."
"Sue, can you put the tape recorder on? Anything's better than this drivel."
"Sure thing." She reached into the mesh bag dangling from the right handle of the wheelchair and turned on the small boombox. Immediately, a woman's voice, sounding slightly metallic, could be heard: "Amore, ritorna, le colline sono in fiore." Brian cringed at the amount of surface noise—a result of taping from an already scratchy 45.
"What's she singing?" asked Sue. "Amore—I recognize that."
"Lover, come back, the hills are in flower," said Brian. "Right, Dad?" When Mr. McCready did not answer, he waited a few seconds, then added, "What I don't understand is why she says ritorna, which seems to me to be the formal imperative. Why doesn't she say ritorni, the familiar form, which you would expect if she's pleading for her lover to return from far away."
"The formal imperative—what's gotten into you, Herr Professor?" Sue laughed and turned away to toss a pebble into the large pond. It dropped through the water's placid surface with a faint clumph.
"And I think she says tu later in the song—which is, of course, the familiar form of you."
"Of course."
"So there's an inconsistency."
"So it appears."
Their back-and-forth elicited no response from Mr. McCready, who seemed to be staring impassively at the pond.
"Dad? Can you clear this up for us?"
He shrugged, moving only his good shoulder. "You're wrong, that's the problem. Ritornare follows the pattern of all regular -are verbs in making the imperative. So it's ritornate for the plural, ritorna for the singular. Ritorni is the second-person present indicative."
"Mama mia!" said Sue.
"Well, it's been a while," said Brian, chastened. "But do you remember the song?"
"This one? No."
"Well, Mom used to play it around the house. You must have heard it." Brian was quickly losing his affability.
"In case you failed to notice, I was at work most of the time your mother was at home playing records. As I said, I never heard the song." Brian's father gestured with his good hand toward the pathway ahead. "If you don't mind, I'd like to pick up the pace—and you can turn that machine off. I can do without that caterwauling."
"Oh, here's a nice part coming up," said Brian evenly. The woman sang the beginning of the refrain again: "Amore, ritorna, le colline sono in fiore, ed io, amore, sto morendo di dolore."
"All right, so the hills are in flower and she wants her lover back," said Sue. "What's the rest of it mean?"
"And I, my love, am dying of sorrow," said Brian. Sue looked sharply at him and gave a quick shake of the head.
"Please turn it off, Sue," said Mr. McCready.
Grimly, Brian reached into the mesh bag and flipped the switch. As soon as the music stopped, there was a rustling among the shrubs alongside the pond. Something unseen was either darting into the water—or hurrying out of it.
"Let's stop here for a few minutes. I want to look at the pond."
"All right." Brian positioned the wheelchair near the grassy bank where his father would have the best view, then walked a few yards away. Sue soon joined him.
"That was nasty."
"What?"
"Dying of sorrow, that's what."
"I didn't decide to turn the tape recorder on," he replied defensively.
"But you made a point of dwelling on the lyrics, didn't you?"
"Good God, Sue—you asked me what the lyrics meant!"
"Which you were very happy to translate."
"Why don't we just drop it. I don't want grief from both of you."
"Fine, we'll drop it." She crossed her arms and stared at the copse of trees across the pond. "It's too bad the geese aren't here."
For a few minutes they stood side by side in silence. Then Brian said, "Look at what he's doing."
Sue turned slightly. Mr. McCready was using his good hand to advance the right wheel, making the chair turn in a circle. His left hand hung uselessly over the side of the wheelchair.
"Do you think he was trying to wheel himself into the pond?" she whispered. "Oh, God, I hope not."
"I don't think so. He knows we're close by. He'd know there's no chance he'd be able to kill himself." Brian swallowed, wondering how much he believed what he was saying. "No, I think he was just trying to make himself move, to prove that he could still do it."
"And that's all he can do," said Sue sadly. "Move around and around in a circle."
"So goes another one of Brian's great ideas," said Brian with a sigh. "Well, we'd better see about getting back to the house."
"I don't care what he says now—my father used to like the Italian songs as much as Mom did."
"And where is this leading?" asked Sue, leaning over the kitchen table where Brian sat with a catalog of CDs. It was a week since their last visit to Joe McCready. "He used to like a lot of things, but his heart isn't in it much anymore."
"But this is perfect! The old 45s are lost or broken or scratchy, and the old turntable barely works. If I'm lucky, I can order some CDs of Italian songs of the Sixties from one place or another and burn a few CDs for him to listen to. He'd love it. He'd get to listen to Italian, he'd be able to brush up on the language, . . . and it would remind him of Mom."
"Do you think being reminded of Peggy is really all that good for him?" asked Sue, arms crossed. "He has enough trouble trying to get past her death."
"But this is in a good way," Brian said in protest. "It's something they shared. He'd still have it, even if she's gone."
"You think so."
"Yes."
"And where on earth are you going to find CDs of Italian pop songs of the Sixties? You don't get any more obscure than that, if you ask me."
"You're right, it's pretty obscure—this catalog doesn't have anything like it. But it's really amazing what you can sometimes find on the Internet."
So Sue was not overly surprised when a package arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later. Brian tore open the cardboard and pulled out six CDs with bright covers, all featuring attractive young women in somewhat outdated dresses or bathing suits. "Well, you'll enjoy the CDs, at least," said Sue, glancing at the covers. "They all look like sultry young starlets from the Sixties."
"Hey, whatever sells the product," murmured Brian, perusing the list of songs of one of the CDs, Nostalgia Italiana: 20 Top Twenty Hits—1964. "Yes! It has the Bobby Solo hit we were talking about, 'Una Lacrima Sul Viso.' I think this is going to work out."
Sue studied the details on one of the other CDs. "Made in Germany! A German production of Italian pop songs—how about that!"
"It's world music," murmured Brian.
"So all you have to do is pick out the best of the batch, burn them on a new CD, and make your father happy?"
"Well, in theory," he replied defensively. "I think it's worth a try." He did not say one of the things that was troubling him—that he was starting this project in part because he felt there was so little else he could do for his father. Wasn't it better to try some sort of activity, however odd, than to do nothing at all? Some widows and widowers, like his friend Henry's father, had learned some new skills or pastimes—for example, surfing the Internet, tapping into a vast pool of information, meeting faraway people in a new, perhaps painless way. But Joe McCready wanted no part of the Computer Age and the Internet. One time, he tried out Frannie's keyboard, pecked a few lines, then scoffed. "There's nothing in it. It's just a newfangled form of mail with a lot of bells and whistles. Not for me. Not for me."
"I'm sure you've never heard the one about my brief encounter with Sophia Loren, have you, Sue?" asked Joseph Aloysius McCready, striding to take his place at the head of the dining room table. It was some years earlier, a time with its own cares but when Peggy was still alive. "Just the two of us, La Loren and I, together in a Roman elevator of modest size. . . . Oh, yes, and I believe your future husband was there, too, probably about ten or eleven years old at the time."
"Probably snot-nosed and sweaty, too, from what I can remember," interjected Margaret Mary from the end of the table. "He was probably on his way to play soccer or softball."
"Sophia Loren!" exclaimed Sue, falling readily into the mode of bantering exaggeration. "If Brian was only eleven, she must have been radiant, miraculous!"
"Practically a goddess on earth," agreed Joe solemnly. "How we came to be in the same intimate little elevator in a Roman apartment building, I no longer remember—"
"Well, I remember," said Brian. "You were taking me upstairs to Steve Cacace's apartment."
"He remembers his friend's name after all these years, but at the time, he didn't even give Sophia Loren a second glance!" Joe McCready shook his head in wonder. "Hard to believe he's a son of mine. We McCready men have always appreciated feminine beauty, especially of the full-figured sort, with some hot Latin blood in them!"
"You hear that, Mom?" asked Brian. "He's calling you full-figured."
Standing by the stereo system, Peggy looked up from her search through some 45 rpm discs to replace the one that had just finished playing. She shook her head. "I have as much hot Latin blood in me as Henry Kissinger!"
"But I'm still interested in how my future husband Brian could have ignored Sophia Loren," said Sue. "God knows he isn't likely to ignore similar beauties today!"
"Ah, then he is my son after all," muttered Joe.
"Look, I've explained this all before," began Brian.
"Not to me," said Sue.
"I was in the elevator heading to Steve's, and I probably had my soccer ball or baseball glove with me, and I was looking forward to playing."
"So you loved sports more than women?" asked Joe, raising a brow.
"What's with this love stuff—I was ten or eleven! I hadn't even seen a movie with Sophia Loren back then! Not that you'd have let me," he added a moment later, taking the offensive.
"I remember she always seemed to be in her slip in the Italian magazines," said Margaret Mary. "Poor woman, I said to myself, she barely earns enough money to afford a full set of clothes!"
"That's Margaret Mary in a nutshell, isn't it?" said her younger sister Frannie. "Always thinking about the plight of others. How you escaped becoming a nun is beyond me."
"I think," said Joe McCready, clearing his throat, "I think this conversation has drifted much too far from its ostensible topic—that is to say, Sophia Loren and I, with young Brian as an afterthought, in a tiny Roman elevator."
Brian guided the car into the parking space and switched off the engine. "I hope he likes them."
"We'll see," said Sue evenly. "You certainly spent a lot of time selecting and arranging and burning the songs for these two CDs."
Despite Brian's eagerness, however, he did not present them to his father until they were finishing their dessert. Then he put one of the CDs in the portable player. A moment later, the smooth voice of Sergio Endrigo issued from the speakers. He was singing a song called "Io Che Amo Solo Te," one of Peggy's old favorites.
"Hey, I remember this one!" exclaimed Margaret Mary. "Where'd you ever find it?"
"In a dark alley close to the pier, from an ancient crone who swore me to secrecy."
"Same place you get your clothes, you mean?" she shot back.
A few minutes later, Endrigo was replaced by Neil Sedaka, who was making a valiant effort to sing in Italian. His hit "Little Devil" had metamorphosed into "Esagerata"—but the producers of the Italian version had made no effort to dub the background singers. "Frugal," thought Brian, wondering what the listeners in Rome in the early Sixties would have made of it.
"I know this one," said Frannie. She shook her shoulders and swung her arms in a parody of dance. "Whoa—whoa—whoa—whoa—whoa-oh, yeah!" she sang along with the chorus. "How is it possible for me to know this song—because I'm by far the youngest of our family."
"Well, one explanation is that you heard Mom playing it years after we'd left Italy . . . but who knows where the old 45 is now." He looked at his father, who was sitting with no obvious expression, his good hand curled around a coffee mug. "Do you remember this song, Dad?"
Joe McCready. "Maybe." He paused. "You say Peggy liked these?"
"Oh, yeah—all of them on this CD."
Joe said nothing.
"Here's Bobby Solo, the guy we were talking about some weeks back. But it's a different song, called 'Se Piangi, Se Ridi.' A little overdone in the vocals, huh?"
"Like Elvis, you mean?" asked Frannie.
"Not the Good Elvis," said Margaret Mary. "Not the slender rocker on the stamp."
While they refilled cups with coffee or tea, Brian placed the two jewel cases in front of his father. "So what do you think?" asked Brian. His father stared at the two cases. "Do you think you'd listen to them? I think you'd get a kick out of hearing some of these oldies, especially in Italian."
"You think Italian makes everything better?" asked Joe McCready with the beginnings of a laugh. "I don't think it works that way."
"Of course Italian makes everything better!" Brian replied. "Everyone knows that."
His father touched one of the cases, turning it counter-clockwise. He showed no interest in reading the song titles on the other side.
"And if you got interested, I'm sure we—you—could track down some more music on the Internet." Listening to all the old songs again had brought back good memories for Brian, but would Joe even give the music a chance? Brian was wondering: had he undertaken the project for Joe, or for himself? But why couldn't it be for both of them? Listening to these songs, Brian could picture himself sitting at an old table in their Rome apartment, racing through the math homework, eager to finish so he could walk to Max's house to join his friends for a game of Risk.
It was frightening to think how old Max would be today. Oh, about as old as I am, thought Brian.
About half an hour later, it was time for farewells, time to begin the long drive north. Brian stared at his father, leaning over the wheelchair, peering into his face for some sign of conciliation, of connection. Nothing—just the same firmly set mouth, the evasive eyes that would not meet his. Brian didn't know whether it was consternation or anger or just plain despair that brought the tears to his eyes. He didn't want it to be this way, but now that it was this way, what could they do about it? Well, from all signs, Brian couldn't do a goddamn thing. He brushed at the tear on his right cheek and turned away. "Okay, Sue, time to hit the road."
Three evenings later, Sue was at the computer, checking e-mail messages for the two of them, while Brian was slumped in the couch, watching the Phillies with little interest. "Hey, there's one here from Frannie," she said. "It's to you."
"Read it," he said, still not stirring himself.
"All right." She clicked on the message. "What the—?" She laughed. "Something odd here."
"What do you mean?"
"This certainly isn't English. Something about 'lacrima,' I think. Can you make anything out of this?"
Intrigued, Brian cast one last look at the TV screen, where someone was dashing between first and second base, and approached the computer. There on the screen, with erratic spacing between words, was a message in Italian: "Da una lacrima sul viso ho capito molte cose. Thanks." Brian read the words, and a moment later, understanding, he felt something deep in his chest turn awkwardly. He swallowed.
"What does that mean?" asked Sue.
" 'From a tear on your cheek I understood many things.' "
There was a postscript, but the spacing was less erratic. "Oh, by the way, in case you're too stupid to realize, this ain't Frannie. Or Bobby Elvis Solo. See you soon."
Brian could hear the words in his head, Joseph Aloysius McCready doing one of his many accents, and he smiled. How long had it taken his father to key in all the letters, hunting and pecking with one finger? Making sure there were no misspellings? "The old bastard!" he said, shaking his head. "At least for the moment . . . he's back."
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