Chapter 9
I rarely visited Joe Senior at work but for some reason that’s where my bike took me after I left Beth and Harold. He was behind the counter talking to a customer in broken Italian, smatterings of English interjected where he didn’t know the words. Joe wasn’t fluent but he knew enough to get by and what he didn’t know the customers never noticed because he more than made up for it with his good Italian looks and his bad jokes. When he saw me come through the door I wasn’t sure whether it was pleasure I read on his face or embarrassment. He waved for me to come in. Beads of sweat were streaming down my forehead and into my eyes causing me to blink uncontrollably like I had some bizarre twitching disease. Things like that were starting to happen to me. Weird little things—like I was losing control of everything in my life even my bodily functions. I was feeling really nervous at the thought of intruding on Joe in the middle of his workday; disarming him the way I did by appearing out of the blue all sweaty and twitchy. “Mrs. Scaranetti, have you met my daughter Jo Frances?” he asked, talking with his hands and pointing at me. “Jo come say hello to Mrs. Scaranetti, my most bella customer.”
Mrs. Scaranetti was about a hundred years old and understood enough English to know that my father was being flirtatious. She blushed like a schoolgirl who had just been propositioned by a sailor and extended both hands to me. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next so I walked into Mrs. Scaranetti’s withered arms and let her hug me. She was pretty strong for a little old lady—my ribs actually hurt where she squeezed out what little breath I had left after riding the five miles to see my father.
“Bella bella,” she wailed as she squeezed and squeezed, tighter and tighter around my waist. I looked over at Joe, silently pleading with him to rescue me from her vice-like grip. It was like she had a thousand pound Sumo wrestler hidden inside her ancient body, she was that strong. Joe came from behind the counter and put his hand on Mrs. Scaranetti’s shoulder and only then did she release me from her powerful hold. He walked her to the door, handed her a paper bag full of bread and gave her an air kiss on each cheek. She blushed and left singing to herself in Italian. Joe and I stood at the door and watched as the little hunched figure, over-dressed in black from shawl to shoes vanished up the sidewalk. “So what brings you here Jo?” he asked, awkwardly, shifting his weight from one side of his body to the other. It was as though Mrs. Scaranetti had come in with a vacuum cleaner and sucked out what was left of his good humor along with every ounce of youthfulness he had. All that was left was this tired middle-aged man who was exhausted from the heat of the day and the brick ovens churning out bread for all the little old Italian ladies who shared the neighborhood with the Finlanders.
“I was just out riding around,” I said and then this weird thing happened between Joe and me. Without realizing it, I started to mirror his every movement like we were performers in some perfectly choreographed dance—when he shifted his weight to the left and crossed his arms over his chest I did the same, when he ran his fingers through his hair, so did I. Then came this embarrassing moment when we both realized what we were doing. Joe turned quickly and went back behind the counter while I cleared my throat, rubbed the sting out of my eyes and said, “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d just stop in to say hi. If you’re busy I can leave.”
“No, no. Jeez, do I look busy? It’s dead in here today. You’d find more action in the morgue. Too hot to bake bread. Too hot to eat it. You wanna pop? You look hot.”
“Sure, sure. That’d be nice.”
Joe reached into the cooler where they kept containers of juice, quarts of milk and bottles of pop for those customers who came in for a loaf of bread but might need a quart of milk too. It was an ingenious marketing strategy. They wanted to discourage their customers from going all the way across town to Safeway or Loblaws or worse yet to the Finnish Co-op down the street where they sold bread at discounted prices. He uncapped a Coke and handed it to me, then took one for himself and held it up in the air. “Salute,” he said and gave me the secret wink he gave Dan and me whenever he was teasing Ma about something, the signal to us that he was just putting her on, seeing how far he could string her along before she got so mad she’d stomp out of the room and not speak to any of us for hours afterwards. On the one hand it was funny, but like a lot of things Joe did he always managed to take it just a little too far. He crossed the line of good-natured teasing into mean-spirited torment far too many times. Ma, Dan and I all had first hand experience with Joe going over the edge, with Joe being the only one left laughing. He held his head back and gulped down half the bottle in one pass. “Salute,” I said, then took a sip and wiped my forehead with the palm of my hand. It was sopping wet. Suddenly I felt very tired, “weak at the knees” as Ma always said when she was exhausted like that, and wondered what could have possibly brought me here to share a Coke with Joe of all people. Maybe Joe was right to toast the event; we both knew it probably wouldn’t ever happen again.
“So where are your friends? Ma says you been hanging out with that new kid across the street. What’s her name? Old man Luoto’s granddaughter or somethin’?”
“Beth. Her name is Beth. She’s with Harold. I just felt like going for a bike ride is all. I like to do things by myself sometimes too.”
“Tell me about it. Sheez!” he whistled. “It’s a cooker!”
“It’s like sometimes I just get so sick of having people around me all the time. Some days I think I’m gonna explode or go crazy, so I take off on my bike and just keep riding and riding to keep it from happening.”
“Is that what happened today?”
“Yeah.” I whispered. And then, right out of left field it hit me that I was talking to my old man. I mean really talking. This was the closest thing he and I had ever had to a real honest conversation and it scared the bejesus out of both of us. It was like we were watching ourselves from the outside or from a distance, like we were actors in a movie. Only it was me and Joe. Maybe Beth was right. Everybody acts. It was getting too uncomfortable for us to go any further with this father-daughter routine. We were in uncharted territory and neither of us had the courage to see where this might lead. It was time to leave. “Anyway, thanks for the Coke. I should be heading back. Ma might need me for something.” “Yeah, yeah, sure. Anytime. Say hi to Ma. Tell her I might be home a little early tonight,” he said as I headed for the door. And then another weird thing happened. First I heard the bells on the shop door tinkle, as it slammed shut behind me. And then I’m almost certain just as the door was closing I could hear my father call out to me in this really soft sweet voice, “Ciao Bella!” It was like for the first time he saw me as a real girl, his daughter—all those squandered years of longing for the impossible were finally over. No echo of disappointment, no bitterness, no sadness in his tone, just the sound of love. I hopped on my bike and flew like the wind, my heart crying out “Ciao Bella, Ciao Bella” all the way up Arthur Street and across Red River Road for over a mile to our street. Down the hill I soared, not once feeling the ground beneath me, until I landed smoothly in front of our house. Danny was sitting on the front steps with her head in her hands waiting for me. “Hey Dan! Wanna toss a few before supper?” I called as I rode up the driveway.
“Sure Jo. That’d be swell.”
Danny and I spent the rest of the evening together, just the two of us. We played catch until dinner and then afterwards we rode our bikes down to Hobo Creek for a swim. I made her swear on her life not to tell Ma or Joe. I threatened to expel her from our group and never allow her to see Sam again if she so much as uttered one word about where we went. Truth is, I knew Danny would never say anything, that she was willing to risk the wrath of Joe just to spend the evening with me. That night was one of those uncomplicated events in your life that are so precious you could stop time and just stay in it forever, not a special occasion like Christmas or your birthday, just a simple ordinary time that has such a sweetness to it that you remember it all the days of your life. I can pull that memory up like it happened yesterday and still hear my sister squeal with laughter as I chased her around the murky waters of Hobo Creek threatening her with a handful of muck and squirming pollywogs. As clear as day, I can see her innocent wideeyed wonder as we made magic with the fireflies.
“What makes them light up like that Jo?” Dan asked, her dark eyes wide with wonder.
“God does Danny. He lights up everything beautiful,” I answered.
“Do you think we could catch some and bring ’em home and keep ’em—just for awhile I mean,” she asked.
“We could Dan but if we did that they’d lose their fire and then they’d just be flies, regular old flies with all the light gone out of them,” I said.
“Is that what happens to them when you put them in jars?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes.
“That’s what happens to anything beautiful that’s bottled up,” I said. “You can’t bottle up beauty Danny-Dan. You got to let it be the way God meant it to be or it’ll lose its true self.” “I see,” Dan said. And I knew she did.