Unto the Sons (15 page)

In the center of the park, surrounded by trees that rose as high as possible in a community founded on sand, was the Methodist Tabernacle, a large frame building with a cupola that was completed in 1881 by the devotees of John Wesley. Leading the settlers who spiritually shaped the island, and who were ministers in the Tabernacle, were the three Lake brothers, one of whom, the Reverend Wesley Lake, sired the tennis-playing son who in the 1920s would drive the Duesenberg. Near the Tabernacle’s main entrance was a cedar tree with a bronze tablet that memorialized the founding ministers’ first meeting here in 1881; and at the other end of the
park, pointed toward the business district that was two blocks to the west, was a Revolutionary War cannon that had been washed ashore with a wrecked British warboat in 1777.

As I walked along the path near the cannon, I saw three young soldiers in trench coats bent in front of the cannon reading its inscription. There were many soldiers in town now, some of them daytime visitors from the military hospital in Atlantic City, but most of them local men on home leave for the holidays. Their photographs had been appearing frequently in the town newspaper since the war began, and in the past week I had recognized some of them as they strolled up and down the main street in their uniforms, waving at the pretty girls who worked in the small shops and the five-and-dime; and in the last year I had heard several stories about such young women suddenly quitting their jobs to run off with servicemen. Even the older blond waitress at the luncheonette who had been romantically involved with the married entrepreneur on the boardwalk, and whose leopard coat still hung unclaimed in my parents’ cold storage vault, had abruptly left town after Thanksgiving with a Coast Guard officer who was stationed in Camden. Since then, in the window of the luncheonette, there had been a sign to which there had apparently been little response: “Waitress Wanted.”

If none of my mother’s salesladies had yet disappeared with a serviceman, it was not for lack of opportunities; for every day there were military men in the store, leaving off their uniforms to be cleaned and pressed, or requesting to have insignias or stripes sewn on in a hurry. The men seemed
always
to be in a hurry, wanting overnight service for cleaning and pressing, and insisting that their new military stripes be sewn on their sleeves while they sat waiting, jacketless, on the delicate chairs my mother had placed near the fitting rooms of her dress department. It was understandable to my parents, of course, that these proud young men, having just been promoted from private to corporal, or from corporal to sergeant, would want to exhibit promptly the symbols of their elevation, but there were insufficient numbers of tailors and seamstresses in the workroom to do these jobs—for which my parents patriotically accepted no money. Yet the slowness of the work often resulted in unpleasant exchanges between the impatient soldiers and my frustrated father.

It was the demanding manner of many of these young men that most aggravated my father, whose Italian village upbringing had always stressed respect for one’s elders. And yet the exigencies of the war, and the jingoism that now prevailed on this flag-waving island—in which the latest recruitment posters displayed a fat and ranting Mussolini even more villainous
than Hitler or Tojo—seemed to heighten my father’s sensitivity to his Italian accent and force him to repress his emotions.

In the store even I at times perceived him as a citizen of questionable status, an alien surrounded by soldiers of occupation. Indeed, his entire business often appeared to be under military supervision, with soldiers blocking the aisle to the dry-cleaning counter while others sat near the dressing rooms, smoking and exchanging barracks talk. Occasionally one of the soldiers, impatient to receive his uniform, on which chevrons were being sewn, would walk boldly back into the workroom, an area that had always been off-limits to customers. As if on an inspection tour, he would wander among the employees seated along the benches with their needles and thread. Spotting his chevrons and seeing that they had not all been sewn on, the soldier would ask, loudly, “How much longer is this going to take?” All the workers would look up, expressionless, their needles pointed into olive drab jackets or sailors’ blue blouses or the high-collared greenish uniforms of the Marine Corps; and my father, from his table in the rear of the room, would reply: “Just a few minutes more.” Then the heads of the men and women would again be bent, and their needles would continue to worm their way through the fabric—including a needle sometimes held in the unsteady hand of Jet, the presser, who in emergency situations was recruited to help sew on chevrons, while a mounting pile of unpressed civilian clothes remained untouched on his table.

Supporting the military seemed to be the mission of all the shopkeepers along the avenue (many had banners in their windows, with stars indicating that they had family members in the service); and the town newspaper constantly reminded its readers to write letters often to those GIs who were unable to be home. In a recent editorial the paper urged the residents of Ocean City not to complain about the fighter planes that “shave our rooftops,” awakening babies and elderly invalids, because the town’s tiny airstrip on the south end of the island was being used for a worthy cause: it was where naval pilots were undergoing accelerated training in carrier landing.

Shortly after this editorial, the newspaper published a front-page story with a photograph announcing the death of the first local man in the war. Lieutenant Edgar Ferguson, who had worked in the post office and had graduated from Ocean City High School, was a veteran of the North African and Sicilian campaigns. He had died on the battlefield in Italy, not far from my father’s birthplace.

My father had attended the memorial service with other members of the Rotary Club, had expressed his sympathies to the lieutenant’s family,
and then had left early to return to the store, where, I recall, he was both distracted and short-tempered as he gave me my list of duties for the afternoon. This was in mid-November, shortly before Thanksgiving, and my mother later explained to me that my father had just received word from someone overseas who had connections with the Italian army that his youngest brother, Domenico, assigned to the Italian infantry, was listed as missing somewhere in the Balkans or Russia.

I had seen my father tuck the overseas envelope into the drawer of his desk in his small balcony office. He always kept the drawer locked, and it was packed with the letters that had been sent from overseas and had been read by my mother. It also contained photographs of our Italian relatives, including several snapshots of the now missing Domenico Talese, about whom my father had spoken to me so often and emotionally in the recent past. My uncle Domenico was the only foreign relative whom I envisioned in terms beyond snapshots, mostly because Domenico’s life, or his life as it was recounted to me by my mother, seemed to be filled with great drama and danger.

Eleven years younger than my father, Domenico was born in Maida in 1914, a few months after their father, Gaetano, had returned to the village to die of his disease. When Domenico was six years old, my father left Maida, and the two brothers had not seen each other in more than twenty years—which was probably why Domenico had written so frequently and descriptively, usually with photographs enclosed: he did not want to be forgotten by his older brother in America, or to be remembered merely as the shy six-year-old who had stood waving good-bye with the other Talese relatives at the Maida train station in the spring of 1920.

In 1937, Domenico had been drafted by the Italian army; and because Mussolini was supporting General Franco’s cause in the Spanish Civil War, Domenico was dispatched along with many Italian troops to Cádiz, where during the next year he was assigned to battle units and twice was hospitalized with bullet wounds. But the most frightening moment that he wrote about from Spain occurred on a day when he was unscathed in battle.

Crouched in the trenches, my uncle Domenico overheard a conversation between two Italian soldiers nearby in which one was saying: “I was born and raised in a time of war, and I’m
still
in a war!” The other soldier asked, “When were you born?” To which the first soldier moaned, as if the day carried a curse: “April 16, 1914.” On hearing this, my uncle Domenico’s interest perked up, for he
too
had been born on that day, in the same year!

“Hey,” my uncle yelled over the trench, “what’s your name?” “Domenico Talese,” came the reply.
“Domenico Talese!”
my uncle exclaimed. “That’s
my
name!” My uncle immediately poked his head up, and, seeing that his namesake had also risen above the trench, he examined a dark-eyed helmeted man with similar facial features—who, smiling and holding up a flask, said: “I’m Domenico Talese of Naples! Come over, let’s drink!”

“Yes,” my uncle said. “I’ll tell the lieutenant.” Edging his way toward the lieutenant, who stood yards away in the other direction, my uncle was requesting permission for the visit, when suddenly he was jolted by an explosion behind him. Moments after the dirt had settled and the smoke had cleared, my uncle turned to see that the trench in which his namesake and the other soldier had stood was now completely gone. It had been eliminated by a direct hit from an artillery shell. Domenico Talese of Naples had been blown out of sight, plucked from the earth and carried into oblivion before my uncle could learn exactly where in Naples he had lived, or how they were related.

Shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Domenico was recalled into the army for World War II; and in the autumn of 1942 he had been on a troopship bound for Crete when a British submarine torpedoed the vessel. With five hundred other Italian soldiers, Domenico sank into the sea. My uncle did not know how to swim. But he grabbed on to a large piece of floating lumber and was able to remain afloat for six hours, and was then rescued by an Italian cruiser. After eight days in the hospital, he was sent on to Crete.

For many months my father heard nothing of Domenico’s whereabouts, except that his unit had been transported by German planes to the European theater. And then, just before the memorial service in Ocean City for Lieutenant Ferguson, my father learned that Domenico was officially listed as missing.

It had never been easy for me to think of Domenico Talese as my uncle—not only because I had never seen him (and now perhaps never would), but because in all of his photographs he looked so different from my father: there was in his pose an almost careless disregard for what people might think of him, a rough-hewn audacity that bordered on bravado and was antithetical to everything I had been taught at home; and the way he wore his peaked military cap, pushed back on his head, revealing a tuft of dark hair above his forehead, was an affectation that my father would have considered roguish. Certainly Domenico’s uniform contributed to my sense of dissociation: there was a small star on each lapel, a royal
crown and crossed rifles on the insignia of his hat, and the chevron stripes on his sleeve pointed downward, opposite from the upward-pointed stripes of American soldiers.

But I liked my uncle’s looks, and what made him most appealing to me was the lighthearted, mildly mischievous hint of the bachelor conscript-adventurer, a man with a live-today, die-tomorrow attitude that was totally at odds with my father’s measured demeanor. It was as if my father’s unlived youth had been inherited by Domenico, who was enjoying it to the fullest if he had not already taken it to his grave. My father, on the other hand—even in those photos taken of him as a teenager in Paris—was always pictured in the sartorial style of a middle-aged man, and with a posture that exuded serious purpose. For my father
was
a serious man, a man who listened to serious music, and who at dinner expressed serious thoughts, and who complained that many contemporary American films, plays, and radio programs were too juvenile, unsuitable for the serious mind.

This most serious self had only increased as the war added to his anxiety, and it had now reached such a point that I was reluctant to express an opinion, fearing that I might provoke him to anger with my opposing view. Sensing that he might explode at any moment, I kept my distance, or trod lightly in his presence, and kept secret as best I could my own tribulations at parochial school.

As I approached the shop on this late Monday afternoon, and watched the trolley from Atlantic City pause at the corner near the bank before clanging on toward the boardwalk, I knew that I would reveal nothing of the decision that had excluded me from the list of altar boys who would be serving Mass on Christmas Eve. To mention this would only invite questions and perhaps prompt my father to make another in the series of futile telephone calls on my behalf to the Mother Superior. Instead, I intended to ride with my parents to Midnight Mass, and go with them through the front door of the church, where it would be inappropriate—and also too late—for a lengthy explanation or discussion of why I was not in the sacristy with the other altar boys. On the following morning, I would resignedly ride my bicycle to the seven-o’clock Mass.

This at least was what I had in mind as I swung my schoolbag off my shoulder and opened the plate-glass door to the shop—and saw, much to my amazement, that my usually controlled father was standing behind the dry-cleaning counter engaged in an animated dispute with a woman wearing a silver fox coat. Trying to slip past unnoticed, I tiptoed along the aisle of the dress department. My mother, who was occupied with customers
near the fitting rooms, smiled at me uneasily as I passed; and then with a raised eyebrow she acknowledged the contretemps in a way that indicated she was as bewildered by it as I was.

I climbed the steps to my father’s balcony office and seated myself behind a potted palm that provided camouflage. Now I could eavesdrop on the scene below and see spread out on the counter between my father and the lady a red silk cocktail dress. All at once I recognized this dress from having seen it during the previous week, when this same woman had brought it in to have it cleaned, and had made a point of requesting quick service because she wished to wear it to a party on Monday night, which was this evening. I remember that the counter clerk had taken the dress back to my father in the workroom, to ask if it could be properly cleaned in the allotted time. When he examined the dress my father noticed a small spot on the bodice, which was perhaps a stain that would require special, time-consuming treatment. For this reason he was reluctant to accept the dress, and I remember that he himself had walked out to the main room of the store to explain the problem to the woman.