Dinner at Fiorello’s (23 page)

Vito said, “If it helps, I didn’t know you were gay.” He paused, considering if he wanted to say what was queued up in his mind to announce next. He went for it. “Although I hoped you were.”

Henry lifted his head and smiled, this time genuinely. “You did?”

Vito nodded, and letting that little bit of information out made his heart feel lighter. “Yeah.” He gnawed at his lower lip, wondering if he had opened a Pandora’s box.

“Why?” Henry wondered. “Why did you hope?”

Vito shook his head. “That’s a conversation for later. I need to figure out what to do with you and get myself back to work. Ro is probably going nuts in the kitchen, and I’ve been gone too long already.”

“Just wait a second. Let me tell you what else is going on.”

And Henry launched into it as Vito sat back, listening and doing his best not to interrupt as the kid spilled out his obviously painful and very recent upheaval in his personal life. His discovery of his mother’s affair, how his best friend had exploited him sexually, and of course, how his father had abandoned him when he needed his family the most.

By the time he finished, Vito realized he was caught up in a web from which there would be no extricating himself, unless he had no heart. Henry, Vito could tell, was trying hard not to cry, staring resolutely ahead while the tears glistened in his eyes.

The stoic part of Vito, the he-who-would-not-be-hurt-again part, tried to put the brakes on what he would say next. And at that Vito failed miserably, because his heart, all during Henry’s recounting of what the last couple of days had been like for him, was being touched again and again, laid open and vulnerable.

So he said it. “You got no place to go, kid?” Vito smiled. “Sorry. Henry. If you need a place to stay, you can stay with me for a bit.” He sighed, feeling as though he had betrayed himself and the defenses he had put so carefully in place over the last year or so were crumbling. But he also was feeling a sense of relief, of letting go. His caring nature would not be denied. “Just for a bit. Your dad will come around. You’ll see.” Vito didn’t feel like he was just mouthing the words. He was a veteran of being in the closet. Although he had never fit in its shadows and regret, he had nonetheless been grateful for his days of hiding, not because they had given him marriage to Angela, who had disappeared from his life when he came out, but because they had given him his son, Salvatore. And even though Sal was gone from his life in a real sense, he would never be gone from his heart. As painful as the memory of the boy was, Vito realized he would always be grateful for it. “He’ll see. You’re family,” Vito said, hoping the words would prove to be true in Henry’s case. He didn’t want to see the boy lose his family, not at such a tender age. “Family is family.”

“Really? I can stay with you?” Henry stared at him with something akin to wonder.

Vito chuckled. “You find that so surprising?”

And Henry chuckled right back. “Why yes, I do, as a matter of fact. You’re always such a hardass.”

Vito felt touched in spite of the words, honest as they were. Henry didn’t say them to be cutting but because they were true. And there was real, scary affection there.

Vito didn’t question what he did next. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have done it. But he turned and pulled Henry into his arms. And he realized, holding Henry close, that he wasn’t holding a kid, a boy, but another man, and the feeling was both strange and wonderful. It had been so long. Henry’s head dropped to Vito’s chest, and Vito stroked the silky wheat of Henry’s hair, comforting. He could smell the scent of eucalyptus in Henry’s hair and something else—something unidentifiable—that Vito could only define as essence of Henry. He breathed it in deeply. Henry let go and sobbed, and they stayed clenched together for a very long time, until the rain slowed to a drizzle and a young woman, dressed in shorts and a Cubs T-shirt, a ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap, stood just outside the bus shelter and grinned nervously at the pair of them, as though asking permission to come inside.

Vito extricated himself from Henry’s embrace and sat up straighter. “Sorry,” he whispered to the young woman. “My friend here has had some bad news. You can come in.”

Silently she entered and sat down, keeping a careful distance away. She pulled out her phone and began tapping at its screen.

Henry stayed close, and he whispered in Vito’s ear, “Not all the news was bad.”

Vito couldn’t help himself. He gave Henry a gentle kiss, wondering if it would be the first of many.

The bus was coming up the street, and the woman stood, putting away her phone and digging in the messenger bag at her side.

“Do you know if this bus goes to Morse? In Rogers Park?” Vito leaned forward to ask the woman.

“It does,” she said.

Vito looked at Henry. “That’s convenient. We’ll just get you settled in at my place, and I’ll go finish up my shift, what’s left of it.”

Henry nodded, and they both stood up as the bus whined and sighed to a stop in front of the shelter.

 “Y
OU
’
LL
COME
back?” Henry looked up at Vito, knowing that wonder and incredulity mingled in his eyes.

Vito rolled his own dark eyes and smiled. “Of course I’ll come back. Where else am I gonna go?” He roughly tousled Henry’s hair. “I live here.”

“That’s right,” Henry said. “You’re not the one that’s homeless. Still, it’s nice for you to give me your bed, to let me stay here. I would have been just as happy on the couch.”

Vito sat on the edge of his own bed, and Henry wondered for how long he had been the bed’s sole occupant. Henry had lots of questions for Vito, but he knew Fiorello’s was open for only a few more hours, and Vito needed to get back to his kitchen to relieve Ro.

Vito spoke to him, never breaking eye contact. “You’re not homeless. You have friends, you have a job, you’ll always have a place to stay, no matter what. Tonight was bad news, but give your dad time. He’ll adjust.”

Henry felt a surge of rage course through him, causing him to ball his hands into fists beneath the blankets and then relax them. The anger went away as quickly as it had come, to be replaced by a numb melancholy. “I don’t know if I care if he adjusts. I’ve never been the son he wanted.”

“That may be,” Vito said. “This might sound heartless, but the truth is, none of us gets to choose who we get for parents.” He pulled the quilt up to Henry’s chest, which was bare. His finger brushed across one of Henry’s nipples. “Or who we get for our children. Son he wanted or not, you’re still his son. Only son, right? No siblings?”

“Only child here.” Henry grinned. “Spoiled rotten.”

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said. I notice you have a curious way of always getting what you want.”

“What do you mean?” Henry sat up straighter in the bed, and Vito pushed him back down.

“Forget I said it. I need to get back to work, if only for a couple of hours. Can you rest while I’m gone? You want the girls in here with you?”

Henry looked over to the bedroom’s doorway, where the two dogs paced, eyeing him in their master’s bed. Henry wondered if they felt displaced. “Of course. This is their bed too, isn’t it?”

“Too? I sometimes wonder about that. It’s their bed, period. They just deign to allow human visitors.” Vito patted the bed. “Girls! Come keep Henry company.” As if they had been waiting, the dogs scampered into the room and hopped up on the bed with Henry. They each sniffed at him and then curled around a few times and settled down against his legs, one on either side.

Vito smiled. “They’ll make you feel better.”

“They already are.” Henry scratched one of the dogs behind the ears. The other sniffed at his thumb and started to lick at the gauze until Henry hid it away under the sheet.

“Okay, for the millionth time, I need to get back to work.”

Vito stood, staring down at Henry, making Henry wonder what was going through his head. Did he see Henry as someone to pity, someone to desire, a nuisance, something else? Vito’s expression was unreadable, and Henry wondered if that inscrutability was the beginning of Vito’s defenses going back up. Henry asked himself if Vito would return later that night the old Vito, the one who spoke in grunts and monosyllables. What would Henry have to cut the next time to get him to open up, to show him a little attention?
What a thought! You didn’t just let that even go through your head. That’s nuts!

Henry watched as Vito left the room and then listened as the front door opened and closed. He noticed the dogs doing the same thing, their heads up, ears poised and listening. As soon as the door closed and the lock clicked into place, the girls lowered their heads to the bed’s surface and in minutes were snoring softly.

Henry wished he could do the same—simply check out. Pursue oblivion and find it. If ever there was a night in his life when a little forgetting would be perfect—no, make that a lot of forgetting, on the order of fucking amnesia—this was the night for it. He let himself recline against the pillow, noticing how the case smelled just very faintly of garlic and olive oil, and smiled.

But the smile didn’t last long as Henry lay in the darkness, the rain-scented air coming in through the window opposite him, being blown around by the whirring blades of a box fan.

“What am I going to do with myself?” he wondered aloud to the shadows, to the sleeping forms of the dogs. “Where will I go?” In spite of Vito’s reassurances, Henry was not convinced his father would come around anytime soon. Vito was obviously Italian, a nationality, if Henry had learned anything at all from working at the restaurant this summer, that prized family above all else.

His father, though, came from Germans, and his mother was of Swedish and Dutch stock. Henry didn’t know if his parents’ genetic makeup set them up to treasure family as much as the Italians.
Oh, come on
, Henry thought,
you’re being silly. People are people. Every one of us is different, and every one of us has the choice to understand, to love, to allow for variations.
He turned on his side, weary of trying to figure out what motivated people, whether it was genetics or something else.

Still, he would have liked to believe that being an only child would be enough motivation for a parent not to turn his back on that child. How could his father say such horrible, unkind things to him?
I’m his son!

Henry felt the tears welling up again, the burning ball in his throat growing and becoming firmer, but he managed somehow to hold his grief at bay.

Whatever happened when Vito returned home tonight and wherever Henry ended up tomorrow, he knew he had no choice right now but to wait and see what the future held.

He did know two things. One, he could keep on working hard at the restaurant. If nothing else, he could continue his education as a chef and prove his worth to Ro. He had to—since he no longer knew if a college education was an option for him anymore. And two, he had opened something up within Vito, something he liked and wanted to know better.

He smiled to himself, letting his hands explore Vito’s bed beneath
him. “You’re certainly in the right place for it,” he whispered to
himself.

And that happy thought at last sent Henry into a light but relatively untroubled slumber.

T
HE
NEXT
time Henry opened his eyes, it was morning. He sucked in a breath, for just one thin moment afraid that he didn’t know where he was, his recent history, or maybe even who he was.

And then reality filtered in, as it had a way of doing on bright summer mornings. The air coming in through Vito’s bedroom window smelled fresh, washed clean by the thunderstorms of the night before.

Henry was alone in the bed, although noises filtered in from the kitchen—the dogs’ toenails clicking on the tile floor, the soft hum of classical music, the sizzle of something frying, the slap of a refrigerator closing. Henry could smell bread and melted butter, and it made his mouth water. He sat up straighter in bed, realizing he hadn’t eaten in a very long time.

Just as he was ready to throw his legs over the edge of the bed and wander out to the kitchen in pursuit of food, Vito came into the room bearing a white tray aloft with the dogs trailing him, snouts up.

“Good morning,” Vito said, his dark eyes roaming up and down Henry’s form, clad only in a pair of boxers. Henry noticed how Vito seemed to force his gaze away from Henry’s body. Henry pulled the sheet up over himself.

“Good morning.” Henry smiled. “I didn’t think I’d sleep.”

“You slept like a baby. But then you went through a lot. You were exhausted. It’s almost noon. I think you were out about twelve hours.”

Vito set the tray down on a nightstand next to the bed, and Henry glanced over at it. On top of an orange Fiesta plate rested a slice of homemade bread with its center hollowed out. In the hole rested a perfectly fried egg topped with thin slices of red pepper and a dusting of chopped Italian parsley. The butter the bread had been cooked in had toasted it to a gorgeous golden brown. Next to it were a couple of slices of tomato sprinkled with coarse salt. There was a mug of steaming black coffee and a small tumbler of orange juice. Henry felt something catch in his throat. Other than Maxine, no one had ever made a meal especially for him.

With his voice just above a whisper, which was the best he could do, Henry said, “Thank you. This looks great.”

Vito took the napkin next to the plate and, with a flourish, snapped it open. He laid it across Henry’s chest. “It
is
great. I had the executive chef at the North Side’s finest Italian restaurant prepare it just for you.”

Vito smiled at Henry, meeting his eyes, and Henry swore something melted inside him. Vito laughed.

“But seriously, this is something my mom makes for me. Good old dago comfort food. It’ll put hair on your chest.”